Mixed Pair Winners! | Linda Lee

by Linda Lee on October 5th, 2010

The winner of the Mixed Pairs was Donna Compton of the USA and Fulvio Fantoni of Italy. Second place went to Kismet Fung of Canada playing with Brian Glubok of Italy. The top 10 had an international flavor with 9 Americans, a Canadian, 5 Italians, 2 Latvians, 2 Russia and a Chinese.

Does this help as you decide which countries (beside the US) will do well in the Open Teams. If you haven’t done so yet then enter the contest. It is easy, costs nothing and gives you a guaranteed prize. For details just click on the picture of the Philadelphia Nationals on the www.bridgeblogging.com

Congratulations to the winners. My special congratulations to Kismet who has represented Canada a number of times in Womens competitions. Well done.

For all the results.

Once again Bulletin is online the night before.  I think I better check to make sure that all the bulletins haven’t been written already.  The cover has a smiling Donna Compton and Fulvio Fantoni with their medals meeting with various officials.  Wow Donna’s smile says it all.

The Rosenblum and McConnell start tomorrow but it will be a while (round of 64) before we see any of it on BBO.  The Bulletin shows provisional groupings for the Rosenblum.  There are 16 groups of apparently 9 teams with presumably 4 teams qualifying from each group.  There are some intriguing team names.  The Italian stallions are all Americans and the Texan aces are a ll Indian except for one player and the playing captain.   It’s interesting to see so many multinational teams as I go through the list.  It is sure to be an amazing event.

The ladies event had only 37 teams entered on the website but maybe more have joined since.  It appears that they will play a round robin to go to 32.  It seems a bit unlikely.  The Seniors teams is even smaller with only 27 teams entered including Canada Master Point Press.  I think they have quite a good chance of winning a medal.  Go guys: Boris Baran, John Carruthers, John Gowdy, Eric Murray, Michael Shoenborn and Joey Silver.

When I checked the Verona event in 2006 the entry was about the same.  I wonder if the organizer expected a bigger tournament with the competition being held in the USA?

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Jennbridge: World Mixed Pairs Finals |

We had a below average and an average game in the final two sessions of the World Mixed Pairs and finished above average--in the top third of the field. Bob says we should be proud, as dozens of stellar pairs finished behind us, but I can’t help feeling disappointed after our great start.

It was actually a fun event. We used screens in each session and used special World Bridge Federation convention cards . The men always sat North and West and the women South and East. In the 3 qualifying sessions we sat East-West and in the 3 final sessions we sat North-South.  We never played the same pair twice.

I’m writing up hands on the flight home and will be posting some of my favorite hands from the finals. It seemed particularly tense in the last session as each pair was jockeying for position and each hand could mean the difference between several places in the standings. These two hands feature interesting card combinations.

Board 4.

I opened one heart with:

? A104
? AKQ74
? 6
? K642

Partner responded 2 hearts, constructive, showing 3 trumps, 8-10 points and 9 losers. As I had the right loser count and was looking for a good board I made a help suit game try of 3 clubs. Partner accepted by bidding 3 notrump. With my singleton I wasn’t especially interested in notrump so I corrected to 4 hearts. A diamond was led and the dummy was not something to dream about:

? Q862
? J106
? A104
? Q95

? A104
? AKQ74
? 6
? K642

Barring some incredible luck I had two club losers and at least one spade loser, along with assorted handling problems. I won the diamond ace and made what turned out to be a key play: a low spade to the ten which forced the king.

LHO continued diamonds which I ruffed. I started trumps by playing a heart to the jack and a heart back to my hand and my problems were compounded when LHO showed out on the second heart.

I next tried a club to the queen which lost to the ace. RHO returned the 9 of diamonds (diamond 10 left in dummy) and I paused to consider the play. If I ruffed, I would be left with fewer trumps than my RHO which couldn’t be right, so I elected to pitch a losing club. LHO won the diamond and paused to consider the defense. He couldn’t continue diamonds without giving me a ruff/sluff and was probably reluctant to return a club, so he exited with a low spade. I played low from the board and won the jack with the ace.

I couldn’t afford to lose any more tricks with the remaining cards:

? Q8
? 10
?
? Q95

? 4
? KQ
?
? K6

I started thinking about the spades. What spade would RHO have played on the previous trick if she had started with J9x? As the jack and 9 were equals once the ten had been played, she probably would have played the jack, the card she was known to hold.  Her in-tempo play and my partial count on the hand, however, caused me to strongly suspect that she started with the jack doubleton of spades.  This meant that LHO started with K9xx of spades and I could finesse the 8. I therefore drew the remaining trumps, cashed the club king and led a spade to the 8, winning the last two tricks and scoring up my game! This was worth 82% of the matchpoints.

LHO held K953/9/KJ8753/73

RHO held J7/8532/Q92/AJ108

Board 11.

Playing 3 notrump with these cards I got a diamond lead:

? J963
? KJ4
? A5
? A1082

? A4
? AQ82
? K83
? Q954

With 8 winners available and only one more diamond stopper, the problem was how to play the club suit for at most one loser. Usually in this situation, it is right to lead the queen from your hand and then, if it loses, later lead toward the 10, a double finesse. This caters to the club honors being divided or LHO holding both honors, a 75% chance. Before starting on clubs, however, I decided to cash my 4 heart tricks to see if I could learn anything useful. Hearts broke 3-3 and on the 4th round of hearts LHO discarded the 3 of clubs!

Surely he wouldn’t throw a club with anything useful in the suit, looking at A1082 in the dummy, so I decided to change my plan and play clubs differently. Accordingly I led a club to the ace and was rewarded when RHO followed with the jack and then the king on the second round of clubs. She started with KJ doubleton! Scoring 430 was worth 76% of the matchpoints.

LHO held: Q75/1093/J642/763

RHO held: K1082/765/Q1097/KJ

Stay tuned for more hands from Philadelphia.  The world championship events will continue through Oct. 16.  For more information, daily bulletins and results, check out:
http://www.worldbridge.org/tourn/Philadelphia.10/Information.htm.

See you at the table!

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Worlds start with the Mixed Pairs | Linda Lee

by Linda Lee on October 3rd, 2010

The World Championships have started with the opening event the Mixed Pairs.  Yesterday was the first two of three qualifying sessions.  My guess is that this year there will be a record breaking entry.  There were 445 pairs from 49 countries entered in the first event the Mixed Pairs.  Don’t miss the article in   .  It includes this photo.  The player holding the cards in the foreground is Roberta Melman.  Her smiling partner is Rhoda Schaffer.  The front cover of Saturday Bulletin has greetings from President Obama.  Among other things he mentions that he has fond memories of his grandparents enjoying the game.  Mr. President I am sure you would enjoy it too!

CBS Philly has this headline

The results are posted and the leaders after two sessions are:

John and Laurie Kranyak  (his mom) with a great cumulated score of 66.2%.  John was on the USA Junior team which won the 11th WORLD YOUTH TEAM CHAMPIONSHIPS Bangkok 2006.

Second is Sandra Rimstedt, Sweden (Sweden) Shane Blanchard (USA) with 61.77%.  I noticed my friends Arnie and Wendy Krause of Canada had a good start with 56.25%, as did Gloria and Les Bart (USA), 56.37%

Sandra

There are lots of interesting hand in the Sunday Bulletin with a good size staff covering the event.  The first round of the final of the Mixed Pairs and the Mixed Pairs Plate (Consolation) start Sunday evening.

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Onward Mixed | Linda Lee

by Linda Lee on October 3rd, 2010

The first session of the Mixed Pairs Final is in the record books.  Check out:

THE RESULTS

After the first round the leaders Yvonne Hernandez – Lu Kohutiak are listed as an American pair but I think they may actually be from Unionville Ontario not too far from where I live.  I noticed that they won the Red Ribbon pairs some time ago so this is a pair that has played together for a long time.   Also notable is that Karen Cumpstone playing with John Rayner is in eight place.  I have enjoyed playing with Karen from time to time on BBO and she has played on international teams a number of times.   Captain John captained the Women’s team I played on in Istanbul.   Kathy Sulgrove and Joaquin Pacareu are in second with Pam Miller and Jim Ramussen in third.  The Mixed Pairs and the Consolation (Mixed Plate) conclude tomorrow with two more sessions.

The Bulletin for Monday was already published by 11:30 EST (very efficient Bulletin staff).  According to the Bulletin John Kraynak playing with his mother Laurie who were leading the field with a huge score (66%) dropped out after Laurie became sick.  I hope she is feeling better soon and I send her my best wishes.

John Kranyak, who averaged 66% in the first two qualifyingsessions, did not play in the third after she became ill.

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A Mixed Bag | The Beer Card

Luckily today is the final one in the mixed pairs and then all the bloggers can start looking for different title puns.

Sam and Tim were the local stars as they finished in 14th place in the qualifying. Unfortunately there was no carry-over and an average first set in the final has left them with a lot to do today, in the last two sessions.

In the plate, Liz and David are just above average and Dee and Anna have a bit more work to do. They both have two final sessions too. The plate is being led by English-pair Frances Hinden and Graham Osbourne, who scored 69%. Frances is one of the more generous contributors to the Bridge Base Forums and hopefully they will continue their good form today.

Meanwhile Mike, Alan, Alex and I have been warming up by playing in the ACBL Regional that is running alongside the main events. I expected that there would be a few doing the same, but only nine teams in our two-day knockout teams has lead to a single handicapped bracket. We are the highest rated team but can not play our normal systems against most teams, but at the moment we are sailing through the event. There was one other good team (Lynn Baker, Karen McCallum, Donna Rodwell, ANO) but we beat them in the first triad and they carelessly lost to the weaker team to got knocked out.

The playing area of the WBF events.

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