Blogs

Labour weekend Saturday the Hamilton Club hosted Intermediate and Novice Pairs tournaments

Winners of the Hamilton Congress Intermediate Pairs - Math Verhaegh & Saty Satyanand from Cambridge

To all Monday night players

This weekend is notable for a number of events - The Election, no All Black test matches, commencement of Daylight Saving for 2017 - 2018 and most importantly at the top of the list, NOT the early start for Bridge on Monday nights which finishes

So all those who play Mondays please note bridge from this coming Monday 25 September until the end of the 2017 bridge year reverts to starting at 7.30pm

See you Monday @ 7.30pm.......

Rip Roaring Success

It was a great day for our club on Saturday with two events being held at the same time.
The Open Swiss Pairs attracted a huge field of 46 pairs while in the other room 32 pairs battled it out in one of the biggest fields of junior pairs I've ever seen in Hamilton.

By my calculation that makes 156 bridge players taking part, many of them our own club members, I counted 56. I never heard from anyone who didn't thoroughly enjoy the day. Even the weather was ideal for playing bridge.

Melinda Wang and Bruce Cresswell were leading the juniors after the first session so would have enjoyed their lunch but Megan Jolly and Graeme Hope who didn't go so well in the morning scored a massive 67.73% in the afternoon to grab 3rd prize and be the highest Hamilton pair on the day with Bruce and Melinda ending up a creditable 5th.
Congratulations to the Putaruru Pair of Ross and Susan Provan who won by nearly 4%.

The Open Swiss Pairs was looking like a formality for last year's winners Grant Jarvis and Ian Berrington from Auckland who were leading by more than 12 Victory Points going into the last round but as Grant told me they saved their worst bridge for the last round suffering a big defeat at the hands of Russell Wilson and Patrick Carter scoring just 2.89 out of 20.

In the end it came down to only the decimal points but Grant and Ian hung on by a nail biting 0.87 of a point to win from Wayne Burrows and Clair Miao. Local pairs were the next two - Jenny Millington and Barry Jones 3rd , Richard Hooper and Gary Foidl 4th. Russell and Patrick's big win in the last round got them into 5th place.

Much kudos for the smooth running of the day goes to the tournament convenor Ella Gray and the wonderful team in the kitchen. Please take a bow.
Barry

Congratulations to Hamilton's Malcolm Smith and Michael Neels who were the winners in the Clubs 2017 5A Swiss Pairs
Coming from a long way back being in 7th place overall with 2 rounds to go Mike & Malcolm played some terrific bridge to come out top at the end of the event

Well done to the pair of you.......

Bridge is a game of numbers. Compass & BridgeMates which make up our scoring package also collect a lot of numbers on our playing along with keeping track of scores, results etc.... As at the end of July we have been busy bridge players having so far this year played approx. 44,000 hands of cards

So what worked and what didn't ? The most popular contract bid was 3NT followed by 4S , 4H , 2S & 2H. Surprisingly what contracts were made is not the same with the most successful contracts being - 1S , 1H , 2C & 1D. What didn't work most of the time ? - 4C , 5D , 6NT & 5C

Finally how good are we at predicting the size of the contract ? - only 27% of the time we made what we bid while 38% of the time we made more than we bid ( 22% of contracts making +1 & 11% making +2 over-tricks ) and more often than we made what we bid we went light - 35% of contracts went light ( 19% -1 trick & 10% -2 tricks )

As for who plays - NS played 51% of the contracts with EW playing 49% and a very small 270 hands passed in. Most likely lead is a Spade followed by a Heart, with an Ace being the card led 18% of the time

Slams are not common - only 2.7% of the bids made, happening about as often as Doubling at 3.6%

Happy Bridge