IBU Trials 2014

Good morning folks
Yesterday afternoon I took a trip down to Citywest to catch the end of the IBU trials where 8 teams were doing battle to make the 4 semi final places.

Teams
Derek O'Gorman, Terry Walsh, Gay Keaveney, Enda Glynn
Steve Bearpark, Gordon Lessells, Hilary McDonagh, Gilda Pender, Martin Brady, Stefan Ekman
Ciaran Coyne, Donal MacAonghusa, James Heneghan, Willem Mevius
Lucy Phelan, Louise Mitchell, Dolores Gilliland, Maria Whelan
Maureen Pattinson, Bob Pattinson, Marcin Rudzinski, Ronan McMaugh, Peter Pigot, BJ O'Brien
Tom Hanlon, Hugh McGann, John Carroll, Tommy Garvey, Rory Boland, Mark Moran
Richard Elvin, Brian O'Farrell, Wotjech Gorczyca, Slawomir Lubanski
John Murchan, Ciara Burns, Greer MacKenzie, Hastings Campbell

My thoughts before the trials started was

Hanlon Coyne O'Gorman with one of Murchan and Pattinson

Despite the presence of Lady internationals Gilda Pender and Hilary McDonagh alongside bidding practice addicts Brady and Ekman (up to 1000 hours bidding practice in last couple of years) along with Steve Bearpark a recent new Senior international was partnered by Gordon Lessels in a non-regular partnership,  I felt this team would be outlasted by the extra experience of the above named 5 teams.

The Phelan Team was playing 4 handed (or is it 8 handed) ie 4 players .. This means no breaks at all and consistant pressure applied by the other teams. Phelan Mitchel have caps at Open Camrose and Whelan Gilliland made the Lady Milne Team last year.

Finally the Elvin team I felt was up against it. Brian and Richard had struggled in a recent trials event maybe the recent Camrose trials. The two Poles I am not too familiar with. Wotjech has been around Regent /Bankers/Dublin for approx 10 years but I think this is his first trials.
Slawomir I know little about except he appeared in the last few years and most of what I know of him is that his name is often spelt wrong by directors/entry takers. It was indicated Slawamir was a Polish junior international. He did play in a Junior Pairs event which was held in Poland in 2001.
About 70 Polish pairs played in that event along side Jamie Martin and Andrew Barton of Ireland.

Anyway much to my surprise and probably some others Elvin started out putting 14 on Murchan and 17 on Phelan to jump into the lead after 2 rounds. Hanlon was not far away after being held to 10.5 by Phelan in round 1 they eased Garvey Carroll into the fray on Friday evening and scored the maximum against Pattinson 20-0.
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Saturday morning arrived ..

Elvin won his 3rd match beating Pattinson
Hanlon put a large score past Coyne
Phelan beat O'Gorman

So Elvin still running well

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Round 4 Elvin continued the surprising run by defeating Coyne and now stood on a nice
score of about 57.4 out of 80 with the other teams running out of matches and Elvin rapidly
approaching the 70 VPs that would guarantee qualification.

Round 5 saw Hanlon hand out the expected beating to Elvin but Hanlon was beating all teams by a decent score. Now Elvin needed an NPC to ease them thru the last two matches on Sunday.
I think they remained in 2nd place despite the loss to Hanlon.
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Round 6 saw Elvin meet the bottom placed Bearpark... However Bearpark leaped off the bottom
and surprisingly blitzed Elvin 20-0. I was told that the hands suited the Brady Ekman bidding system. I will play the hands later against Jack and imp against Brady Ekmans opps and see how
I go. I expect to make a plus score without having Elman Brady bidding skills. That will be in a later blog.
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Round 7 saw possibly 6 teams fighting it out for 3 places. Hanlon was home at this stage.
Coyne and O'Gorman were favoured but heavy losses could drag them back into the mire.
Pattinson saw off Phelan comfortably and the other matches went as expected with large wins for Coyne and O'Gorman.

Final IBU Trials results from fob.ie

All details of IBU trials can be found on www.fob.ie

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Hanlon scored a comfortable 81% of the VPs and now enter the semi final.

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Last night I went for a drive around Dublin and tried out my new technology that I got for Xmas.
A Samsung Galaxy that counts my steps. I am making an effort to do 10000 steps a day. I am told that will give me a shape less like BJ O'Brien and more like the new steamlined Thomas MacCormac. I found some of Rory Bolands wine on my travels so that was ok.

This morning I was up early so I went for 3200 steps with my dog to burn off Rorys wine.
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Last night I played Match 1 of the IBU trials against Jack bridge program.
hand 13 had what seemed a decent slam in 6S. However despite having a conversation earlier in the day with a trialist about the hand where I indicated it was an easy slam ... I still could not bring myself to bid that slam .. so I languished in 4S like my esteemed trialist.

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BJOBrien pointed out to me yesterday that I have not blogged since December 02 2013.
Well it has been Xmas ...
I think I might post an IBU semi finalist  special

So you declare 5 clubs on the lead of Heart King and at trick 2 the Heart Queen ...

Can you out perform an IBU trials semi finalist. You will need more than 10 tricks.

Can you make it ..