Anna Kalma's blog

You might have noticed things being a bit quieter at the bridge clubs last week ... NZ's premier event - the NZ Bridge Congress took place in Hamilton running from Friday through to the following Saturday - 9 days of bridge up for grabs. Not everybody took part in every event but there was also some great results from our locals;

The event started with the Youth Teams and Jacob Kalma and Adrian Wisse competed in the Waikato team who were in top place after the round robin but lost in the final to the Johnstone team who featured many top Australian players.

Then onto the NZ Pairs and Open Restricted Pairs. Kathy and Ken Yule were the only qualifiers from our area into the next round and eventually got 6th in the plate finals. Jacob and Anna Kalma had a poor start in the Open Restricted Pairs but pulled back over the following 3 rounds and ended in 6th place.

For those that didn't qualify into the finals of the Pairs, the option was to play in the Back to the Future Teams event - an event where you play a round with every person in your team. Lynette Morgan, Ian Bond, Lesley Quilty and Anna Kalma managed to make it into the final 13 teams and finished 11th.

Congress pic: Kathy and Ken take on the eventual winners during the Teams

The NZ Teams is the premier event at Congress with 110 teams competing. Ken and Kathy Yule competed in the Jarvis Team who qualified 6th making the top 16 teams and then played through to the quarter final being knocked out after an appeal from their opponents (the eventual runners up) overturned the result.

The field then gets to choose to play in a variety of events ... Intermediate Pairs, Mixed Pairs, Senior Pairs or Same-Sex pairs. Best result was for Lesley Quilty and Tom Henwood who came third in the Senior Pairs ... Tim Rigter and Rochelle van Heuven came 10th in the Intermediate section while Anna Kalma & Tom Winiata came 9th in the Mixed Pairs.

Congress pic: Lesley, Tom Winiata and Sonia receiving the trophy for winning the Senior Teams from Alan Morris (NZ Bridge) and Murray Wiggins (Chief Director) on the left
Onto the next competition; Senior Teams, Point-A-Board or Intermediate Teams. Great result from our senior citizens - Lesley Quilty, Sonia Crawford, Tom Henwood & Tom Winiata who won the senior teams.

While in the meantime Tim Rigter, Rochelle van Heuven, Charlotte Jager and Anne Leighton were 3rd in the Intermediate Teams - another great result in a strong field.

Finally the ultimate events of the tournament; Swiss Pairs with opportunities to play in the Intermediate, Restricted or Open.

Jacob Kalma and his Auckland partner Jeremy Fraser-Hoskin did well to come 4th in the Restricted Swiss and Tim Rigter and Rochelle van Heuven backed up their previous form by coming 4th in the Intermediate Swiss... also a great result from juniors Peter Daffurn and June Zhu who punched above their weight to come 20th in the Intermediate.

In the open - Sonia Crawford and Anna Kalma were also having a great run and were coming 12th with just a couple of sessions to go ... but sadly their stamina let them down (or perhaps it was the lunchtime wine!) and they slipped to 44th ... meantime Lynette and Ian ended their congress with a very credible 31st in the large and strong field.

It was great to see many other Matamata, Te Aroha and Morrinsville club members taking part in the event ... Rochelle who was at her first Congress and came away with 10A points ... commented that she was amazed by how enjoyable it was ... it wasn't intimidating at all and most people were friendly (there is always one or two old trouts at the table!) and says that we should be promoting it a lot wider next year.

Rochelle: celebrating after her first A point secured .... first of 10 at the 2017 Congress for Rochelle and Tim

well done to the Te Aroha BIGGEST TWIT team that took home the inaugural junior TWIT trophy and spoils.

TWIT winners: TWIT winners from left Peter Daffurn, Jan Baker, Peter TJ, Hanna Frischknecht and Malcolm Kirkby ... absent are Pamela Clydesdale, Shirley Townsend and June Zhu

Other recent club champ winners include the 4 leaf clover team that came from behind in the Saxon teams to snatch victory and proving that luck had nothing to do with it!

Winners of Saxon Teams: Clutching the spoils are from left Hermanna, Jan, Hanna and Nancy

NZ Bridge Congress takes place starting this end of this week at the Distinction Hotel in Te Rapa {next to the Waterworld}

Congress isn't just for the seasoned players - there are events for Novice, Junior and Intermediate as well as a Restricted Open alongside the major open sessions.

We encourage any Novice players {ie those who learnt bridge in 2015, 2016 or 2017} OR those with less than 5 B {or rating} points to come along and play in a special afternoon session on Saturday afternoon starting at 2pm and experience the buzz of NZ's premier event which costs just $10.

You can either rock up on the day with your partner ... or if you would like help arranging a partner talk to your tutor or club captain.

All the information regarding the event including entries and programme are available via the NZ Bridge website: http://www.nzbridge.co.nz/congress.html

Good luck to all the Matamata-Piako members who will be travelling to the event.

We had a quality field turn up in Matamata on Sunday from as far North as Auckland and South to New Plymouth.

Winners with a great afternoon session and a pretty decent morning one as well were Waikato pair John Little and Graham Saunders

Intermediate winners

Second place went to Rochelle van Heuven and Tim Rigter of Te Aroha.

Intermediate runners up

Intermediate: The top pairs from the Morning session square off against each other at the start of session 2. Te Aroha's Rochelle van Heuven and Tim Rigter vs Cambridge's Vicky Jacobsen and Jenny Oxley.

The hand of the day came courtesy of Board 11 in session 2...

Dealer south none vulnerable.

	AJ Q763 Q2 KQJ65
K643 AKJT9742 A		Q9875 85 764 964
	T2 AKJT942 8743

With shape and favourable vulnerability for both sides, many in the field were pushed into slam. While 6 by South shouldn't make according to the makeables - this would only have been with a spade lead - but this would have been an unusual lead from West who was sitting there with a shed load of diamonds and singleton A of Clubs.

Most south's would open a preemptive 3 or even 4. We suspect that nobody looked for the E-W spade fit with West eventually overcalling 5. North with 15 points and looking an 11 card fit in hearts easily calls 5. West, understandably has fallen in love with their hand and calls onto slam much to the dismay of East with their 2 mere points. The lucky ones get doubled by North and make their contract. The unlucky ones get outgunned by North bidding 6 and the really unlucky ones then go and double North-South who then make their slam!

What's been happening in the Matamata club lately ... benefit night, competition winners, new members and a new Grand Master. Read all about it in the document attached.

Congratulations to Lynette Morgan who today after coming runner-up in the Waikato Area Pairs series gained the requisite couple of A points she needed to gain her Grandmaster status.

lynette and lesley: Lynette GM receives her bouquet and congratulations from Lesley Quilty GM at Monday Night bridge in Matamata

Becoming a Grandmaster is not an easy or common occurrence. Only around 140 people in the country hold the GM rank in NZ. You need at least 1000 rating points (and at least 500 A points).

Well done Lynette - awesome job:)

See below photos of local Morrinsville, Te Aroha and Matamata members enjoying the Cambridge 6s tournament in the weekend. At 66 tables (or 44 teams) it is the largest one day bridge tournament.

Cardiac Arrest: Pamela Clydesdale, John Phillips, Ian Bond and Lynette Morgan combined with a couple of northland relatives to come 5th overall out of 44 teams.

Family Time: Anna, Foster, Jacob and Mum Kalma along with Charlotte Jager and Adrian Wisse from Te Aroha. The best of this bunch was Jacob and Adrian who came 3rd in the Intermediate section.

Dirty half dozen: Michelle, Jan, Noel, Kathy Marie & Beth represented Matamata as the dirty 1/2 dozen

Bridge Mates: The Morrinsville team.

Peter and Malcolm: Peter and Malcolm deep in thought - they were in the Dagg team

A disappointing entry of just 4 teams played at Morrinsville on Sunday Aug 6.

And that included a team of four novices, all from different clubs, assembled just the evening before.

Not surprisingly that team did not fare well in the final reckoning especially as neither pair had played with each other before. We hope they enjoyed the day though, and perhaps learned something.
The teams played a 16-board match against each of the other three teams. Each match was split into two halves so each pair played against both pairs of the opposing team.

The winners were the Te Aroha team of Malcolm Kirkby, Peter Daffurn, Charlotte Jager and John Phillips. They won all their matches convincingly (although they didn’t quite score the maximum 20 VPs in any of them)

Second were the Hamilton team of Bryan Robb, Linley Robb, Jim Ward and Bill West with two wins (one of those WAS by 20 VPs).
Third were Jo Bowman & Jenny Shaw (Morrinsville) with Nicola Slade & Peter Tait-Jamieson (Te Aroha). They won one match with 20 VPs but lost the other two.

And the “encouragement award” goes to Lynne Boyack (Huntly), Mary Allen (Morrinsville), Lynn Ryan (Matamata) and Tineke Yates (Te Aroha).

Great to see a full room for the annual Matamata 5A open. Winners were team Franklin/Auckland.

Matamata Open winners: From L-R; Grant Jarvis, Richard Solomon, Gary Chen & Ian Berrington

Yes it was a dead heat thanks to a late scoring adjustment!

For those who want to work out who was playing with whom ... check out the results!

Third place: Carol Richardson and Steve Boughey combine for third place

Best Matamata Pair (and 5th overall): Kathy and Ken Yule, best Matamata pair and winners of the Kim Crawford wines

Other winners were Kate Terry and Judy Pawson who took fourth place.

The World Contract Bridge rule book gets updated every 10 years.   The 2017 edition has just been rolled out and will be in force in NZ from 1st August. Murray Wiggins, NZ Bridge Chief Director held a seminar for directors in Matamata last week to explain some of the changes

There have been a lot of minor changes to the rules which you probably don't need to be aware of (and many the rules have changed to reflect what people are doing already like it is now officially against the rules to move the board from the centre of the table during play).  

However, probably the biggest change is the introduction of a "comparable call" which is further explained in the attached flyer that Kathy Yule put together for us laypeople.

The key changes that you may experience at the bridge table and how the comparable bid can effect the play are as follows;

Pass or Bid out of turn

Previously:   If you passed/bid out of turn and the LHO didn't accept it, the penalty was that your bid was cancelled and you were ruled out of the bidding for one round.   This often caused partner to bid wildly guessing the final contract because their partner not being allowed another bid in the auction.

Now:   The bid is cancelled and you can continue to take part in the bidding contest as long as your next bid is comparable to your first bid (or is limited to your original mistaken pass/bid).  See notes for further explanation of comparable bids.

Insufficient Bid

This has also been rewritten to take into the new comparable rule ... so;

previously:   If you made an insufficient bid and were told to 'make it good' but this would change the meaning of the bid BUT a change of bid would mean that your partner could not bid again for the rest of the auction.

now:  If you make an insufficient bid using a convention then you can 'make it good' with a different bid as long as it had a comparable meaning to your first illegal bid.  

If you as the opposition feel aggrieved that your opponents have used unauthorised information through making a mistaken or insufficient bid to their advantage or they think the comparable bid is not really comparable - you can voice your case to the director and they will look at the hand on a case-by-case basis and see if any adjustment is required.