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101 years young, Mavis Meyer.

We’ve seen a great start to the year based on participation at local tournaments with booked out notices going up well in advance of the event day.    Of course, the latest change to alert levels has us nervously waiting to see what affect it will have on us in the coming weeks.

The next major tournament is Rotorua’s Kelly Pierse Teams which has 28 teams already entered and many Auckland players involved in teams.   The organising committee think it is responsible and fair that this event will only take place if ALL of the North Island is at alert level 1.   On the same weekend is the free directors’ seminar planned to be held (featuring Wellington’s Allan Joseph) at the Rotorua Bridge Club for those wanting to sit their club directors’ exam or just get more confident in directing at their local club (enter on the NZ Bridge tournament website if interested).    However, a decision on whether both these events will take place will be made around the 15^th March.

Tournament Successes

We mopped up 2020 with some cracker Christmas tournaments … the second to last being Rotorua in early December.   As we were letting the ham and pavlova settle, the winners were announced and after two 65% sessions Michael Curry (Hamilton) and Christine Gibbons (Te Puke) were comfortable winners ahead of Judy’s Pawson and McLeod, both of Tauranga. 

 

Mike and Christine hamming it up with Santa,
alias Rotorua’s Heini Lux

Historically the last Christmas hurrah is Huntly… however, they opted out this year allowing Taupo to snap up the slot in mid- December.    While perhaps Taupo isn’t as geographically aligned to Auckland as North Waikato would be, that didn’t deter a full field with many travelling from the Hawke’s Bay for this event.   In fact, one pair undertook the road trip twice in one weekend when they got the days wrong (I’m sure Yuzhong Chen and Gary Foidl from Waikato Club won’t mind me bringing this up again as it’s been a few months since their misadventure got some exposure on the Bridge Zone radio show).

Blair Fisher and George Masters head and shoulders above the rest at Taupo

Anyway, the long and short of it was that the day was a booming success.    Lovely clubrooms overlooking the Taupo Golf course, awesome BBQ lunch which did make a refreshing change for the many hams we seemed to have consumed over the previous month. As far as results went - to make the top 5 placings you had to score over 60% but actually who cared when everybody went home from the day with something.

This did make for a long prize giving for winners Blair Fisher (Hamilton) and George Marsters (Hastings) who had to sit through 40 prizes before receiving their victory prize swag.   In second place were Barry Jones and Jenny Millington of Hamilton.

A respite over the New Years (for some) and then back into it with the first tournament for the region being the Thames Summer Festival in early January. Several events over the three days with the top spot of the walk-in pairs won by Peer Bach and Setsuko Lichtnecker of Auckland.

The powerhouse Chen team from Akarana didn’t put a foot wrong for the whole Teams event with a clean sweep from 6 matches and taking out the John Eldridge trophy ahead of Liz and Blair Fisher, Grant Jarvis and Russell Wilson.

The Allan Barclay Swiss Pairs were competed as East West and North South fields with the respective winners being Sam and Jo Simpson (Tauranga) along with Alice Young and George Sun (Auckland).  The format of N/S and E/W winners proving popular with the punters.

                                                         Thames Winners                                                         and "caddy work"
   Top Team in the John Eldridge Teams             Tops in the Allan Barclay Swiss Pairs

                                  
June Lei, John Wang, Gary Chen                          Sam and Jo Simpson, Alice Young    The caddy stands in for Jeremy as he searches                    and Jeter Liu                                                          and George Sun                                 for his third seat (see below)

      

As an aside, we were bemused when Jeremy Fraser-Hoskin broke not one but two chairs during a Swiss Pairs match.   He insists it wasn’t because he was rocking on the back legs - as our mothers always told us not to do when we were young (ah, okay,he is still young) and we reckon that while he is a very good player he’s not literally a “heavy weight” of bridge.. so perhaps a tad unlucky!

The chairs were made of sturdier stuff at the Tauranga Bridge Club in January which was lucky as Jeremy Fraser-Hoskin along with most of bridge’s heavyweights were in attendance.    Jeremy partnered with 19 year old Jack James (Palmerston North) to win the 15A Pairs over three sessions and 48 pairs. Australian refugees Ashley Bach and Liam Milne took out second place with June Lei and Jeter Liu of Auckland third.    Kinga Hajmasi and Andrew Michl from Royle Epsom club took out the Restricted event that played alongside the Open with 10 tables.

June and Jeter were also winners of the consolation pairs on the Monday.  I discovered the secret to their success when I spent the morning session seated at adjacent tables which were positioned at the edge of the Bridge clubrooms.   Every now and then when June was dummy, he would drop to the floor and do a flurry of press-ups and stretches – obviously works to limber up the brain as well.

                                                Tournament Winners at Tauranga

                     
Jeremy Fraser Hoskin               June Lei ("press up king"),                     Malcolm Mayer, Grant Jarvis, Kinga Hajmasi and Andrew Michl
and Jack James in the              and Jeter Liu in the Consolation Pairs     Michael Ware and Ken Yule   Restricted Pairs winners
Open Pairs                                along with Tauranga President, Kate Terry     Teams winners                 (with Tauranga President, Kate Terry)

and wasn't Jeremy wearing a very suitable shirt for a winner.

Last weekend Taupo held their Intermediate Pairs tournament which is the first tournament in the Waikato Bays league.Sabrina Peters from Thames won the league with her partner Carol Crowfoot in 2020 and started on a high winning the event – this time with another Thames clubmate, Geraldine Maddox.

In the meantime the first session of the WAP series kicked off in Matamata.   Ian and Pam Moore (previously of Rotorua and new residents to Cambridge) got off to a flying start.   A reminder to those who missed the first of the 6 part series – you can drop one score if you were at the South Island Teams or otherwise engaged and still be eligible for overall series placings.

Finally a shout out to Tauranga’s Mavis Meyer … 101 and not out.   She was awarded a special table number and was the lucky recipient of the $100 raffle (rounded up to $101) at the Tauranga Congress.   Another great endorsement for bridge.

Mavis Meyer

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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