Today Sunday August 4th saw the final session of the Full Tilt Irish Bridge
Masters in Galway.
Held at a purpose built arena for poker the bridge fitted in nicely between
two banks of poker playing areas.
Starting the day Sally Brock and Barry Myers led from Jason Hackett and
Alex Hydes and we had 26 hands of bridge to play at about 6 minutes per
hand.
I was setup to broadcast one table of vugraph and with one of the well
known poker stars playing in the bridge event it made sense to broadcast his
table.
Therefore the director rotated the tables a little so Gus Hansen and
Fleming Deneilsen were seated close to my area.
So we were setup to go but we had no Gus Hansen.
Suddenly Donal MacAonghusa materialized and sat down opposite Fleming
Deneilson as a substitute. Very few in the poker world knew that Donal had been
an international bridge player at Open and Junior levels in the past so
Fleming was pleasantly surprised to find he had found a good replacement
Boards 13 14
McAonghusa started off by overcalling 4H and the opponents felt he was too
high and doubled him. Donal wrapped up 11 tricks and that was a fine
start.
Then the intrepid pair defended 1NT and a diamond lead left home 1
overtrick.
Boards 15 16
Fleming made 11 tricks in 4 Spades after a defensive slipup
Then we had Donal MacAonghusa at the helm again in 4S.
Donal played well and brought home 11 tricks by dropping the final Heart
high honour when East failed
to play his known Heart 10 on the 2nd round of hearts.
Then Gus Hansen finally arrived on the scene. Fleming thanked Donal for his
contribution and
Gus Hensan took over.
Gus was faced with a tough hand to start with and with his partner making a
supportive noise
Gus overreached to 5S and got doubled and went 2 off.
Hard to blame him as he mentioned to partner .. I thought you might have
two more aces
Board 21 saw Gus with a tough problem after partner doubled 3 clubs for
takeout ..
Commentators on vugraph wondered would Gus find the winning pass ..
Sure enough after some thought Gus passed and with precision defence the
contract was held to 5 tricks
and this was +800 for Hansen Deneilsen ..
Then some trouble appeared on the horizon with World Ladies champion Fiona
Brown looming with
Danish partner Nadia Bekouche.
Fiona is interviewed above by Full Tilt ..
So our intrepid Gus Hansen opens up with a solid weak 2 bid in hearts
..
The girls East West compete and use lebensohl to show a weak hand with
clubs ..
Fleming decides to have a piece of that and Brown feeling we are in trouble
offers up a redouble
to partner to take us out of here to another contract ..meaning diamonds or
spades ..
Nadia being not to enamoured with her diamonds or spades decided to leave
it in 3C redoubled.
This contract was destined for 2 off and zero matchpoints so Brown tried to
sneak home the trump King
risking the possibility of 3 off and the same zero matchpoints ..but
Fleming let it slip past and Brown managed
to get out for 1 down ... Redoubled was 400 and probably still a zero
percent score.
Board 1 saw good defence by our intepid pair and a declarer slip to beat 3D
off 3
Board 3 saw Gus overreach into 6 Hearts when 5 Spades was going down 1
Board 5 saw Fleming make 10 tricks in 3NT after Ciaran Coyne took advantage
of vulnerability to
make it tough for Gus Hansen
The Hansen table was broadcast live on the internet and at one stage we had
660 spectators watching in
their homes .. Now sometimes 2-3 people might watch on same computer so we
don’t know exactly how
many people would be watching. Sometimes in the past we have logged into
Vugraph broadcasts in our
local clubs and we might have 50 people watching on the Big Screen
Several well known bridge players looked in to see how a superstar of the
poker world might fare at bridge.
Gus Hansens picture is posted in many places around the event marquee and
on the side of the Harbour Hotel.
I personally did not know much about poker until about 3 months ago when
with this event coming up I thought
I best brush up on the lingo at least. So yes even Eamon Galligan has heard
of Gus Hansen but I did not know
what he looked like ..
Gus was a gentleman at the table and made small talk and big talk with all
opponents who wished to engage.
As this event is sponsored by Full Tilt Poker and Gus is one of the group
known as “The Professionals“ it made sense
to make the effort to put Gus Hansen on the Bridge Base broadcast today.
I have heard it said that Gus bigs up bridge anytime he gets a chance and
it was great for me to be able to put him up there
for the bridge world to see.
The files of the Full Tilt Irish Bridge Masters can be found at the above
link.
Session 3 is not there yet but will appear.
www.fob.ie has all the results of the 3
sessions on Tournament Director Feargal O’Boyles website
Lots of information on the hands and contracts can be found there
Thanks
Eamon Galligan
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