The Malta National Open teams championships, sponsored by Hennessy, were held at the Malta Union Club earlier this month.
After four rounds of six-board multiple team matches, the winners were Albert Sacco, Chaim Fedida, Anna Vella and Nathalie Marlin with a total of 271 vps.
Bjarni Kristjansson, Svetlana Roukhliada, Kathy Williams and David Olliver were second, with 263 vps, and Wendy Busuttil, Marielle Salomone, Alice Portelli and Celia Portelli were third, 231 vps.
The Malta Bridge Club also held its open teams championships recently and the winners were Kristjansson, Roukhliada, Williams and Albert Ganado. In second place were Sacco, Marie Farrugia, Marlin and Vella.
This tournament had a real photo-finish with both leading teams scoring exactly 300 victory points. Kristjansson’s team won the tournament on an imp difference of 7. Mario Dix, Margaret Parnis England, Charles Assouline and Graham Penney were third with 276.
It is worth noting that the World Bridge Federation has recently published a new version of the imp to vp conversion scale.
The idea is to make the scale continuous, such that for example, on six board matches, instead of say 12 to 14 imps all equating to 20 – 10, all 3 imp values correspond to a different amount of vps.
This is clearly a lot fairer. Unfortunately, it introduces fractions of vps (the proposed scale goes to two decimal places) and clearly makes manual scoring more complex.
The trend nowadays is to use computer scoring and therefore the argument about arithmetic complexity is redundant.
The Sigma Open pairs tournament at the Union Club was won by Farrugia and Albert with a score of 342.25. Irene Naudi and Joan Consiglio were second with 330.39 and Busuttil and Marlin a very close third with 328.14.
The national open pairs tournament, sponsored as usual by Marsovin, was also won by Farrugia and Albert with a score of 233.76.
In joint second position and a hair’s breadth behind were Yvonne Muscat Inglott with Stanko Grammatiko and Graham Penney with Charles Assouline, both pairs scoring 233.14.
An incredible result after so many boards.
On this board from the third round of the Hennessy tourna-ment, only one South managed to find the correct defence against 4 Hearts. Dealer East. North South vulnerable (imp scoring).
Imagine you are in the South seat. Partner, North, leads the King of Diamonds. Plan your defence.
With a little luck, your partnership will make two tricks in Diamonds and one in Clubs. That is not enough to defeat four Hearts.
Is it possible to develop another trick somewhere before declarer sets up those Clubs?
Partner overcalled at the two level and so far has only shown a maximum of six points in Diamonds. He clearly has no values in Clubs and probably nothing in Hearts either.
Obviously a Spade switch is needed. Probably partner cannot switch to Spades from where he sits. Therefore, whilst you still control the Club suit, you must overtake partner’s King of Diamonds and immediately open up the Spade suit. It seems to be your best chance of defeating 4 Hearts.
This will expose a Spade loser for declarer before he has a chance to discard on those Clubs.
This was the full deal...