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Welcome back to our Regional News Reports with the first of the year coming from Wellington.

As you might expect, there is more of bridge at the end of 2020 in this update, and very little of 2021. But there’s the prospect of much club bridge and much tournament bridge ahead. Let’s hope we can keep going at the pace of the last couple of months of 2020.

Tournaments

Firstly, a tournament that got away.  This was the Kapi Mana Intermediate set down for the 11 October. Perhaps there was a lack of entries, given we had just set up and ran two additional and appealing tournaments after the cancellation of the Congress.

The Waikanae Intermediate and Junior tournaments on the 8th November were well attended. There were 34 Intermediate pairs and 12 in the Juniors. Adrienne Gilbert and Rezea Morgan won the Intermediate, closely followed by Marie Groves and Lorraine Borland, and Diana Warring and Meredith Ross, second equal. Alistair Pain and Emily Williams were the winning Junior pair, with nearly a 4% margin. Julie Wray and Michael Steele came second.

           
Adrienne Gilbert and Rezea Morgan                 Tournament sponsor, Graham Roulston
                                                                           and Alistair Pain
15th November saw the Masterton Multigrade Teams, an event where a top pair (often, but not necessarily Open) teams up with a pair formed of Intermediate or Junior players. Like plays like. 14 teams fought it out, the winners being John Davidson, Anne-Marie Russell, Barbara Tumilowicz and David Don, followed by the Pam Hancox team. The third team were all locals, Lynn Hall, Pam Bannatyne, Sydney Morgan and Dale Dick.

The year finished with the Xmas Cheer on 12th and the Suzanne Duncan on the 27th, 28th and 29th December.  Both events were held at the Wellington Bridge Club.

The Xmas Cheer is where the Regional Committee hands out its various trophies. More on this later on. The Xmas Cheer winners, out of the 62 pairs, were Nigel Kearney and Kate Davies. Liam Milne and Susan Humphries were second, Michael Whibley and Ashley Bach finished third.

                              
Xmas winners, Nigel Kearney and         Eason Lu and Martyn Rew           Suzanne Duncan winners, Nigel Kearney
 Kate Davies                                                                                                and Jack James

Noteworthy winners of the prize for the Intermediate/Other category were Eason Lu and Martyn Rew.  Eason might well be the youngest player taking part in a 3A tournament for some time.

39 pairs managed to qualify over all three nights of the Suzanne Duncan. Winners were Nigel Kearney (again) and Jack James . Paul Carson and Mindy Wu came second.

National Events

The Babich Wines NZ Wide Pairs was well covered on the NZBridge website. 7 of our 12 clubs held sessions. A local top was gained by Pryor Rowland and Peter Farley at the Waikanae Club. who came third nationally.

 
 Pryor Rowland and Peter Farley with their Babich wine

Another result well covered by NZBridge was the IP finals, hosted on the 21st November at the Wellington Club. Sadly, the home team advantage wasn’t enough to extend our record to a 5th win in a row, so we ended our streak of wins at four. Again, our Intermediate team were convincing winners in their section.

We sent (virtually) our two pairs to the national Rubber Bridge finals. They were Brian Cleaver and David May, and Russell Dive and Anthony Ker. BBO wasn’t our friend this time.

Other Local results

The Wellington Bridge Club runs two big tournaments on club nights over the year. Qualifying events in each of the pairs and teams are held monthly. These competitions are open to players from local clubs, and are always well supported. COVID interfered with the qualifying matches, but the club rearranged the programme to give these events priority, and the finals were held as usual.

The Poppy Roberts pairs winners, out of the top qualifying 22 pairs, were Nigel Kearney (again) and Karl Hayes. John Patterson and Kate Davies were second. Arumugam Kumarasamy and Graham Weir won the Plate.

The Paul Titcombe Lowe & Co Premier Teams was won by Alan Grant, Anthony Ker, Nigel Kearney and Karl Hayes.

You might notice that Nigel stepped up onto the podium for both those two events, as well as recording his wins in the Xmas Cheer and the Suzanne Duncan.

The Interclub competition was severely affected by lockdowns during the year. There were a couple of resets, inevitably made at short notice, that affected the format. The eventual winning team captains in the five categories were:

• Open -                   Sandy McKirdy                     Wellington 3
• Open Restricted    Bridget Hannaway-Willcox    Wellington 1
• Intermediate          Andrew Smith                        Karori 2
• Junior                    Neil Sargisson                       Hutt 3
• Novice                   Lori Dianne Fernan              Kapi Mana 1

 

As mentioned above, we gave out our regional trophies at the Xmas Cheer. We didn’t hold some events this year, so no trophies for them. The missing in action trophies were the Wellington Congress Pairs and Teams, the Mixed Sex Pairs, and the Wellington Region Club Championship.

Traditionally, we have prizes for the most A points in local tournaments, the best performance in local Intermediate tournaments, and several prizes in our Junior League competition. Again the opportunities to do well were affected by cancellations. We couldn’t determine a way to determine the top Novice player. (not to mention, being unable to hold our usual social gatherings for new and novice players.)

Nigel Kearney presented with his trophy
by Martyn Rew on behalf of the Regional Committee

Top A point winner                              Nigel Kearney

Intermediate Championship              Martyn Rew and Andrew Cushnie

Junior League Winner                       Pauline Edwards

Peter Benham (1947-2021)

There was a sad start to the year with the passing of Peter Benham.  I won’t repeat the coverage on the NZBridge site. Peter was often mentioned in these updates for his performances in local and national events. Not mentioned in my updates was his larger than life presence and contributions to his Wellington Bridge Club.

John Luoni gave his tribute to the Wednesday night regulars, and Peter’s frequent bridge partner, Brian Cleaver, wrote in the Club’s newsletter. Fittingly, a memorial service to Peter was held at the Wellington Bridge Club on the 28th January. This was very well attended by family, friends and past workmates, as well as the many bridge players who knew Peter.

 

 

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