South Island success in South Island Teams.

Jeff Miller and Graeme Stout

It was rather appropriate that victory in last weekend’s South Island On-Line Pairs should go to a “mainland” pair, one of their strongest in Jeff Miller and Graeme Stout.

The event was run with a 2-session qualifying with a field of 80 pairs. The top 15 each direction made the Final, the next 15 the Plate and the rest played the Consolation, all 2 session events on the Sunday. Jeff and Graeme returned scores of 58.39 and 49.64% to qualify a comfortable enough 12th and then 59.84 and 51.79% in the Final which saw these as the final scores:  

1. Jeff Miller | Graeme Stout  | 908.64

2. Julie Atkinson  | Patrick Carter  | 888.21

3. Gary Chen  | John Wang  | 887.43

4. Lysandra Zheng  | Pam Livingston  | 887.36

5. William Liu  | Steve Boughey  | 883.64

6. Jo Simpson  | Sam Simpson  | 877.43

7. Jeremy Fraser-Hoskin  | Moss Wylie  | 869.43

8. GeO Tislevoll  | Michael Cornell  | 866.64

9. Carlos Pellegrini  | Steve Baron  | 846.57

10. Peter Collinge  | Noel Woodhall  | 843.43

In the end, Graeme and Jeff had a few match-points to spare though there were very few match-points separating the next few places.

The Plate was won by Daisy Lu and Xiao Lu from Emma Strong and Jan Alabaster and Barry Jones and Jenny Millington while Deborah Tangney and Nebojsa Djorovic won the Consolation.

Would you open the following hand in first seat at equal nil vulnerability?

♠︎ Q 10 5

♥︎ J 2

♦︎ A Q 9 8 6 3

♣︎ 8 6

West	North	East	South
	?

While it might be an OK Weak 2 opening, several North players who presumably were not playing a Weak 2♦︎, chanced their arm with 3♦︎ and rather paid the price in a slightly unusual way. The hand seems to have too many soft values in the majors to warrant this action while the diamond suit can only be described as average.

Those who did open 3♦︎ found a quick acceleration of the auction:

They were lucky that East did not try 5♥︎ which loses a trick in each suit or -300. Most East players passed 5♦︎ and North made a comfortable enough 11 tricks for +400. 4NT over 4♥︎ would be Key Card rather than an attempt to play there. 

Jeff Miller was one of those North players who passed in first seat. It was an important board played against 3rd placed Gary Chen and John Wang. John felt he had bid enough by the time Graeme Stout bid 3NT:

West	North	East	South
Chen	Miller	Wang	Stout
	Pass	1 ♥︎	1 NT
Pass	3 ♦︎	3 ♥︎	3 NT
All pass

After ♥︎8 lead, via the best kind of spade finesse, Graeme managed a comfortable 11 tricks for +460.

Michael Cornell (South) had to deal with a very persistent Matthew Brown:

West	North	East	South
Tania Brown	Tislevoll	Matt Brown	Cornell
	Pass	1 ♥︎	Dbl
Pass	3 ♦	3 ♥︎	3 NT
Pass	Pass	4 ♥︎	4 NT
All pass

Same heart lead: same result. It would be virtually impossible for West to find a club lead, the only one which beats 5NT if the bidding escalated that high. More realistically, North-South scored better when North did not open the bidding than when they bid.

A nice weekend’s bridge well organised by directors David Stephen and Babs- Merel de Visser (South Island success here as well as on the playing front) aided by a North Island scorer, Kevin Walker.

Richard Solomon