AUTUMN IN ADELAIDE — THE FIRST 2024 SEASONAL NATIONAL
Bridge is an indoor game. Why then, one wonders, does Australia choose the time of year when it is the outdoors that instead beckons for its two major annual all-comers multi-tournament gatherings? These are the Summer Festival of Bridge in Canberra each January followed (even more closely next year than has been usual) by the Gold Coast Congress in February.
It was not until 1979, well over a decade after the above-named were respectively brought into being by immigrant Scots George McCutcheon and George Jesner, that Victoria inaugurated a similar though smaller winter event. New South Wales followed suit in the spring of 1987 and South Australia completed the seasonal triple in the autumn of 1993. The main tournament at each of those is a nationally rated open teams championship of which no two are quite alike. In Melbourne there is no final. The (repurposed) Victor Champion Cup goes to the team that tops a ten-round Swiss. In Sydney an overlong(?) twelve-round Swiss is merely a qualifying stage from which four teams go forward to semi-finals. The comparable trophy there goes to the winners of the ensuing final. The Adelaideans split those differences with an eight-round Swiss followed by a final between only the two top place-getters.
Last month's top qualifier in Adelaide was team McMANUS . Its members were James Coutts partnering Matthew McManus (both NSW) and frequent overseas visitor Hugh McGann (Ireland) partnering Justin Mill (Vic). They were in second place after the first qualifying round, improved to first after the next and stayed there till the end. Each of the 'Mc's, with different partners, had won this title in 2023. Coutts had done so in both 2021 and 2022. The other 2024 finalist was team COLES. It contained three Canberrans, Brad Coles partnering David Appleton and George Kozakos, whose partner was former New Zealander Fraser Rew (NSW). In the penultimate qualifying round COLES had beaten McMANUS by 17 IMPs and a closely fought final seemed likely. In practice, however, McMANUS jumped to a 33-nil IMP lead on the first five boards, was still 23 IMPS ahead at the end of the first 14-board quarter, 44 after the second and 51 after the third before COLES belatedly got into gear and won the fourth quarter 69-32 but lost the match 126-140.
Save for the diagrammed deal, the opening session would have been even more one-sided.
In the diagrammed auction Coles's 1NT systemically promised nine to twelve high-card points. His hand, given its excellent spot cards, was distinctly stronger than it might have been. McManus's alerted 2♣ interpose promised both majors and Appleton's 2NT showed clubs. 4♥ was a key-card ask with diamonds as the agreed trump suit, the 4♠ reply showed one such, 4NT asked about the ♦Q, and 5♦ said yes. Passing at that point would have made no sense.
Against 6♦, ♠2 was led to 4-6-Q and the play continued ♦A-6-4-2, ♦3-♥9-♦Q-5, ♦7-10-K-♥3. Able to afford only his inescapable heart loser, declarer then had to hope for one or the other of two low-percentage lies of the unseen NS clubs and to choose which one to play for. One was a singleton ♣J in South's hand, in which case the winning line would have been to broach the club suit by leading dummy's ♣Q. Whether or not North elected to cover with ♣K, declarer would thus be able to win the needed first three rounds of that suit. Easily deducing however, from the auction and the early play, that any club singleton could only be in North's hand, Appleton next laid down his ♣A and claimed his contract when North's ♣K obligingly appeared.
A very different auction at the other table —
Pass-1♥-Dble-3♥
Pass-Pass-Dble-Pass
5♦-Pass-Pass-Pass —
put McGann into the contract East-West would want to reach if they could see each other's cards. Here, however, North was on lead. The play began ♥K-2-8-10, ♠3-8-9-10, ♥Q-A-♦3-♥9, ♦A-6-4-2, ♦K-♥3-♦7-5, ♦J-♥7-♦Q-10 after which there appears to have been a uncorrected Vu-graph operator's error. The recorded overtrick did not affect the IMP-score, which was eleven to COLES. Other Canberran silver medallists at the autumn nationals were Christy Geromboux and Sebastian Yuen who finished second in the mixed pairs championship there.
More than once upon a time, if my memory serves me, the final of the autumn teams usually coincided with Adelaide Cup Day. When or why that convenient arrangement ceased is something I may never have known. Contrastingly, the last day of its winter equivalent will again coincide with the monarch's Official Birthday on the second Monday in May in Melbourne and Canberra (though on other dates if at all in many other Australian states and territories). The schedule at https://www.bridgebase.com/ indicates that a selected match from each 90-minute round can be followed live, bid-by-bid and card-by-card with, very probably, keyed-in expert commentary. The scheduled daily starting times are 10am, 11.50am, 2.15pm and 4.05pm; with four rounds on each of Saturday and Sunday and the last two on Monday morning.
Australia's oldest annual event, which celebrated its 90th anniversary in Perth last year, is the annual interstate teams. This year's host state, New South Wales, will break new ground next month as well as retrieving some that has of late been lost. The novelty will be the relocation of the event to a regional venue, the town of Orange, where there is a thriving 37-year-old bridge club that owes its foundation to the enterprising Canberran already mentioned here, the late George Jesner. The ground retrieved is the achievement of a maximal field, a team from every state and territory in each of the open, women's and seniors teams championships. The youth field still lacks participation from Tasmania and the Northern Territory, a problem that should be high on one or more Australian Bridge Federation to-do lists.
At the tables there for the ACT will be: open - David Appleton, Brad Coles, Vanessa Brown, Will Jenner-O'Shea, Bill Tutty, Jodi Tutty; women's - Pam Crichton, Julia Hoffman, Jennifer Carter, Lyn Carter, Mary Tough, Bev Crossman; seniors - Peter Grant, David Hoffman, Malcolm Carter, Bernard Waters, Adrienne Stephens, Peter Kahler; youth - Maxwell Ashurst, Dev Shah, Alexis Wilsmore, Jade Wilkinson. The event website (abfevents.com.au/events/anc/2024/reps.asp#reps) already contains details of the many associated all-comers events, suited to players of every level of ability. More will be added by 6 July when the program begins and more still by 18 July when it ends.