5th International Bridge Festival

Bulletin 1

12 November 2002 Editor: Jaap van der Neut

You are coming from all over Europe for this 5th edition of the Madeira Bridge Festival. Although last week’s weather was even better the Madeira sun will be a welcome change from the rain and cold of Northern Europe. The festival will be truly international. The current World & European Champion, team Lavazza of Italy, will be here for the team tournament. These are players you rarely have a chance to meet let alone to play against. But there are more World Champions around. Bep Vriend & Marijke van der Pas (Netherlands) have won the Venice Cup in 2000 (= World Ladies Teams Champion). I hope I didn’t forget anyone. I have seen more famous names on the entry list.

But this tournament is not only about champions. As anybody who has been here before will tell you, this is a friendly festival on a friendly island. Carlos Luis, Miguel Teixeira and all the Club Sports da Madeira will take care of you. As Carlos said in his short speech at the opening cocktail yesterday:

|   1 | A Martins Soares         Jose M Gouveia      | 63.64 |

|   2 | Maria Tulonen            Ari Poponen         | 62.31 |

|   3 | Donh                     van der Hooven      | 59.85 |

|   4 | Lucia Grosmann           Ger de Boer         | 59.66 |

|   5 | Hennie van Beck          Magda Raes          | 58.33 |

|   6 | Hoogland                 Beyer               | 57.77 |

|   7 | Armi Koistinen           Kari Koistinen      | 57.39 |

|   8 | J ter Linden             M Jurg              | 55.68 |

|   9 | Maria Corte-Real         Jose Moraes         | 54.55 |

|  10 | Ines Serra Lopes         Pedro Pimenta       | 53.79 |

|  11 | Marjukka Pesonen         Tuula Keso          | 53.41 |

|  12 | Robert Snapper           Ricardo Fernandes   | 53.22 |

|  13 | Joao Machado             Silvio Costa        | 52.84 |

|  14 | Per Olsen                Arne Olsen          | 51.14 |

| =15 | van Dalen                Werkoven            | 50.95 |

| =15 | Nils Nordman             Hakan Lager         | 50.95 |

|  17 | Irene Sousa              Jose P Sousa        | 49.05 |

|  18 | Marga van de Meulen      Peter Linsen        | 48.67 |

|  19 | Veronica Wessells        Peter Schipper      | 47.16 |

|  20 | Nuno Mata                Pedro Nunes         | 46.21 |

|  21 | Joan Wycherley           Jose A Fernandes    | 45.27 |

|  22 | Susan Steenbergen        Jan Kniper          | 44.13 |

|  23 | Antra Ilzina             Ivars Ilzina        | 43.94 |

|  24 | P Coggrave               C Coggrave          | 41.29 |

|  25 | Angeline van Houwelingen Peter Verstegh      | 37.50 |

|  26 | Carole Sear              David Franklin      | 37.31 |

|  27 | Angela Matias            Acacio Matias       | 34.09 |

|  28 | Eero Kukkonen            Pertt Tervoren      | 29.92 |

This was a simultaneous so there was also an overall international result which proved to be quite different. Best local pair was Hoogland-Beyer, 15th overall with 63.37. It really makes a difference with which scores you compare. By the way, if your name got misspelled, the TD and the Bulletin is as good as you fill in your entry form.

Recently I was playing the Dutch pairs championship. I pick up:

Partner pass, 1¨ to the right, red against green. Do you or don’t you. If partner has to lead a spade you should but if not it seems better to pass. Winning the bidding is probably not a good idea with this hand at this vulnerability even if they forget to double. I passed. Wrong. It was safe to bid and partner had to lead a spade against 3NT to stop the second overtrick.

Some boards later partner showed me how to play pairs.

Right hand opponent opened 1§ . The crazy guy overcalled 1ª on this rubbish! Green against red ok, but partner has not yet passed. When I try to pull this kind of stunt partner always turns up with some strongish hand including a good heart holding and you get a zero one way or another. But look at the full board.

The bidding exploded. West had a normal negative double. I had an enormous hand but no good reason not to bid an ‘innocent’ 4ª , at this vulnerability you often get doubled. That is exactly what they should have done because 4ª is one down for a better than average score for EW. But east decided to bid on. I was happy to double 5¨ and lead © A and then the singleton club. 800 and a clean top. Now what is the idea of all this. Should you always bid at pairs. You should bid a lot but there are some limits. I think I should have overcalled on the first hand. It is close but the chance of losing/winning a trick at the lead probably offsets the risks. But overcalling on the second hand is lunatic in my view. I would like to hear some stories from you about crazy overcalls that backfired. We have to show that to undercall is not always winning bridge. It shouldn’t anyway.		ª KJ93 © A98752 ¨ A3 § 4
	ª A108 © QJ104 ¨ Q764 § J8		ª 2 © K63 ¨ K1052 § AKQ73
		ª Q7654 © - ¨ J98 § 109652