Saturday, October 22, 2016

Moran team prevails in Camrose Trials eventually

Last weekend in Limerick 4 teams competed in the Camrose Final trials.
Myself and Nathan Doyle attended in order to operate the vugraph so the event could be witnessed by many people live around Ireland and anywhere else in the world who wished. We hoped to spread the BBO around all the teams but on our first effort of non-Moran BBO we found Johnny Phelan playing poker against Ciaran Coyne and Donal MacAonghusa so we reverted back to Moran versus the field.
In hindsight this allowed us witness what looks like at first glance a dominant performance by Hanlon McGann. However on closer inspection of just one board so far one finds Hanlon McGann gathering in 39 cross imps when luckier play and bidding at 3 other tables would see them concede 50 cross imps. One guy in front of me just did not draw 2 rounds of trumps before pitching his loser and was no longer able to make when diamonds broke 6-2 and an opponent could ruff. Another pair bid 6NT for some reason with a 9 card spade holding and the final declarer also went down in the makeable 6S contract.
I know of at least one other board where Hanlon McGann rolled home a 7S contract that the declarer at the other table declared in 7NT for a long time before realising the contract was spades. Eventually he went down and that was 28 more cross imps in the bag instead of a more modest 10 imps for 7S making. One pair declared 6NT making. Following this 7S disaster Hanlon McGanns opps chose to declare a 9 card heart fit in 3NT for some reason and there was only 8 tricks available. Another 29 cross imps for sitting there smiling. And that's only 3 boards I have examined.
Still 10 sets of 12 boards producing plus imps on every set is a dominant position.
I show below the results
With 30 boards to go the Moran team was on the ropes as O'Gorman had eased into a 20 imp lead in the direct match and moved to the top of the table and would just require a small win against MacCormac in the final match. However Moran rallied and 3 game swings materialized and Moran took the match by 9 imps and more importantly a lead of about 6 VPs into the final match. This all meant that 14 VPS would guarantee Team Moran success. However they beat Phelan by 16-4 and the deflated O'Gorman team could only managed a losing draw against MacCormac. So the favourites took the win but not without a good shaking from O'Gorman.



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