NZ Congress week

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