Camrose Weekend and DON playing

Tonight Friday we have the start of the Camrose Trophy. Teams from England Scotland Wales along with 3 teams from Ireland will contest the event.

http://www.bridgegreatbritain.org/

http://www.livebridge.net/bbo/wbf/team.php?event=1035&cat=OPEN&team=IRELAND


Information can be found at the above links .

On paper the two main contenders should be IRELAND (CBAI) and ENGLAND but the whole event is going to be measured by how the NORTHERN IRELAND teams shape up after their initial heads up tonight.

The IRELAND team is proven at European level and field professional bridge and poker player Thomas Hanlon among their roster. However in a recent 96 board training session held at the Regent Bridge Club in Dublin with Jason Hackett and Thomas Paske as the invited filler ins ...it was Rory Boland and Mark Moran who led the standings. Grainne Barton is the NPC and she sttempts to keep this gang in line.

The Northern Ireland teams seem to be a little disrupted as the original 2nd place trialists are missing due to illness, Thats Robert Plunkett and Paul Tranmer. I don't know all the details but the original reserve pairing also appear to be missing. Also the decent pairing of Murchan and Burns did not appear to enter the trials. However this information is just gleaned from reading the NIBU website as opposed to talking to anyone.
Northern Ireland is as ever backboned by the ironman pairing of David Greenwood and Rex Anderson who most people would deem to be the class pairing of NIBU bridge for many years.
They have other strong partnerships but these other pairs seldom operate beyond the Camrose and to the best of my knowledge don't put in the training time required to compete at the levels of ENGLAND and IRELAND teams. The problem for most Northern Ireland pairs is the Camrose is a step up in class from their normal levels of play so they are under pressure from the off.

One item sticks in my memory from a conversation with John Matherson after last years Camrose.
A Northern Ireland player showed him the AQ of clubs over his KJ in dummy during the play and this took the pressure off and allowed John a cold line to his game contract.
In the heel of the hunt it did not matter as the trump queen finesse was working and the contract always made. However sometimes it is not about that one sees but the big picture is different.
However John did not know he was cold at the time.

SCOTLAND AND WALES both field very experienced CAMROSE teams
Scotland with youth and experience and Sime
Wales look very experienced with multiple Camrose caps among their squad.

Stamina plays a large part in bridge these days so one wonders about match fitness when looking at the amount of grey hair on show in the Team pictures.

I will be attending the Final weekend in Northern Ireland to help out with vugraph.

So 1900 hours on BBO it all kicks off ..

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www.bridge-now.com is the place to play bridge these days. No sign of the magical BJ O'Brien entering the site yet. Declan the Don player continues to improve after posting a 52% session this week. Shane the poker player is playing less and remaining below the radar but he was looking over my shoulder last night and still maintains a strong interest in the game.

Myself and Declan the Don player played a few games of DON on Wednesday night against Jimmy the Donplayer and Declan the Trustee. DON is a similar game to bridge except 9s and 5s are the important cards. Trick taking and cardplay is the same as bridge.
However on one occasion spades were trumps and I knew Declan the Don player had some and he had no hearts. Declan the trustee who does not know any bridge made the error of leading out a Heart and with Eamon and Declan the Don player both off hearts ...Eamon was able to drop a 9 and Declan was able to scoop in the trick. Jimmy the Don player not knowing Declan the trustee had suicided him attempted to cross the small DON but Declan stemped on it with the BIG DON.

In bridge this would be termed a ruff and discard play.

Declan the Trustee prides himself as a top class card player and wins money most weeks in the local poker derbies. However he is outclassed in the world of DON by painters and decorators who spent their youth playing DON at lunch breaks and if they played badly they got the dirty jobs in the afternoon.

So myself and Declan the Don player won 2 euro each for the 2 games of DON

Last night Declan the Don player informed me that I missed out on the Xmas DON action as Stephens Day DON was 5 euro a corner. Apparently Declan the Trustee got thrashed again.

Thanks
Eamon Galligan

Regent 90th Aniversary Congress

Today sees the finish of the Regent Congress in honour of the club being formed 90 years ago.
Elmpark Golf Club a well known centre of bridge players also formed this year I believe.
Well I saw some bushes shaped in a 1925 last time I was down there.

The Regent is where I learned lots of my early bridge from about 1989 to 2010 or so. Nowadays I direct every Wednesday night so that has ended my Regent bridge playing career for now.

Declan Byrne remains as the custodian / manager of the Regent Bridge Club pretty much since I first went there. He no doubt was in full flow this weekend despite being a larger Declan than the slim Declan of the late 80s.

Results of the Regent Congress events can be found at their Bridgewebs site.

http://www.bridgewebs.com/regent/


probably maintained by the above mentioned Declan Byrne.
Amazingly enough Mr Byrne also found time to represent Ireland at junior bridge many years ago.

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Today is the Congress Pairs event and strong rumours and the entry list indicated the presence of
Justin Lall and Thomas Bessis in the field along with Irelands top bridge player Thomas Hanlon.

In the mid 2000s I was lucky enough to come across a group of online players which included a teenage  Justin Lall and a teenage Madala so I get whopped a few times there too.

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The weekend of Dec 12 to 14th just gone Team Barton (Irish international team) held a training session. Eamon was given the job of gathering 96 boards for the weekend. I chose a world class pairing and chose a year and selected all boards where 10+ imps went missing or came in .
This gave me 99 boards remaining after deleting all the flatter boards of the set.

I heard no complaints over the weekend about any of the boards. After all they had all been played in some Bermuda Bowl so they could hardly blame me.

I was very happy to see that the Moran Team invited any juniors to come in and watch proceedings as long as they were seen and not heard. A junior training session held that weekend also used 1 set of the same boards as our training session.

Several Dublin juniors turned up for a look and watched a session or two. They were also allowed stay for the hour long discussions after each 16 board set. Some even got fed.

The players were McGann Hanlon Garvey Carroll Boland Moran aided by Jason Hackett and Thomas Paske from England.
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My current fad is http://www.bridge-now.com/

Several well known Irish players are having a go. Its free and has a chess like rating structure.
Mind you one needs to average about 62% to hold down a 1600 rating ..

Two folk I taught to play bridge in my local drinking establishment have settled at approx 1450 rating despite never attending a bridge club or taking lessons.
Declan the Don player and Shane the Poker player.
My brother Desmond has also taken up the game but his main gig is getting the opponents to go down. So a defensive player. Despite having little knowledge of the game Desmond bottomed out at 1412 and managed to gain a point last week on a 38% week.

No sign of the mercurial Benjy O Brien yet but Thomas MacCormac has ventured in.

Thanks
Eamon Galligan