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Tournament Successes.

The big tournament winners from the past few months included Grant Jarvis and Ian Berrington who took over by a whisker from Michael Ware and Geo Tislevoll on the final round of the National Swiss Pairs in Hamilton across 58 pairs.

 

Opponents Michael Ware and Ian Berrington do the maths at the end of play to work out who won the Swiss Pairs in Hamilton.

The Waikato Interclub was well represented with 23 tables competing in the Junior, Intermediate and Open sections which had 7 clubs send full teams.    While some of the purists didn’t agree with the format of Multiple Teams over traditional Teams events, I think it worked well and meant that the punters went home early and happy.   The overall winners were the Waikato Club followed by Cambridge but for many of the clubs the day is more about competing and fostering club spirit such as the Te Aroha team pictured below.

Te Aroha – just there to have fun!

The top team at the Te Aroha Spa Town Teams Open event were from left Malcolm Mayer, Anthony Hopkins, Jenna Gibbons and Mike Curry.   It was obviously a while since Mike had been given the microphone for a victory speech judging by the amount of jokes he had stored up.

                                                SPA TOWN TEAMS WINNERS

                           
Open winners, Malcolm Mayer, Anthony Hopkins,           Multigrade winners, Melanie Rex, Brian Gallaher,
 Jenna Gibbons and Michael Curry.                                 Pamela Pederson and Brian Sullivan.

The winners of the Spa Town Multigrade (for teams with less than a combined 200A points) was Melanie Rex, Brian Gallaher, Pamela Pederson and Brian Sullivan with the women hailing from the Bay and the Brian’s from the Waikato Club.

In other tournaments in the region over the past few months; the Rotorua 5A saw Hawkes Bay visitors Matthew and Mairi Bristow as the overall winners.   The Putaruru 8B was won by Matamata’s  Lesley Quilty and Anna Kalma and the Morrinsville Open 8B was won by Matamata’s Anna Kalma and Noel Grigg.   Two Restricted tournaments over the period had  Di Emms and Jenny Oxley from Cambridge as the winning pair and in Te Puke, Tauranga’s Kate Terry and Melanie Rex scored an overall win.

Waikato Bays Initiatives

With learners coming out of lessons, they are being looked after and introduced to tournament play via the Mini Moos initiative.    The first of these was held on Sunday 1 July at the Morrinsville Bridge Club under direction of Nick Whitten.   A pleasing field of 36 individuals turned up to play an individual movement for the afternoon which included 16  new players travel from Rotorua who have benefitted from the Regional Bridge Mate support over the past few months.

                         

The top five placegetters at the Mini Moos in Morrinsville.  Barry Jones and Mereana Cullen – radio jocks!

Hamilton’s Gold Grand Master Barry “no wife, no life” Jones and club captain Mereana Cullen have joined forces to host a bridge radio show on access radio airing every Wednesday – the second show can be accessed via the link below.   Very professional and entertaining!   p.s Barry hasn’t lost his wife for good – she’s just tramping in France.

Cambridge and Tauranga have developed an innovative interclub competition “the great Boat Race” that sees them competing against each other on their Wednesday night club matches which are then compared as with X clubs system.   We look forward to seeing how the competition unfolds.

Failing to plan means you plan to fail...or the "root" cause of Anna's failed contract!

the root cause of defeated slams!

I’ve had the odd complaint from my partners that when I’m helping to organise an event and playing at the same time it often means bottom boards for a while until I get my head in the right space!    

So this board was in the first set at the Spa Town Teams.  My partner and I had a lively uncontested auction which through a few SNAFUs saw me end up in the East seat as declarer in 6 !  8 was led.Dummy went down and my first thought was “woe is me” or something slightly stronger – a moysian fit with lots of gaps not least being the ace of trumps.    However, the lesson here is you should never give up:  the trumps break well, and all the missing honour cards are on the right side meaning the only trick to lose is the A – whether you are in 6 , 6 NT or 6.  

 

Unfortunately, with my head still being clogged up with minutiae such as the lack of toilet paper in the women’s toilet or whether I remembered to tell the caterer about Richard Solomon’s aversion to carrots …the opportunity for our first set win was thwarted when I failed to finesse to the J from dummy on the first round of the suit.    A perfect example of failing to plan means you are planning to fail! 

I regularly have to take the blame for what happens at my own table but rarely do I have to apologise for what happened at one where I was not present! Anna and the Te Aroha Club turned on a wonderful day including a lovely lunch, though alas there was a massive bowl of carrots present. Perfect planning for a moysian slam requiring a favourable trump break and at least two successful finesses would involve a big bowl of tomatoes instead of carrots: far better for me and evidently for Anna's concentration too. 

 

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