CLUB BRIDGE IN NEW ZEALAND
In February 2009 Kay and I toured the south island of New Zealand for two weeks. During that time we visited two bridge clubs, one in Invercargill and one in Dunedin.
The clubs welcomed visitors and the people were very friendly. The clubs had their own quite large premises and they both opened the bar after play and sold drinks which most players imbibed while waiting for the scoring to be done.
In New Zealand club sessions seem to be stratified. You can’t play in the advanced night (called “Silver Reserve”) unless you are judged by the club to be of sufficiently high standard. This does not apply to visitors – we played on the nights we were there. In Invercargill it was their top night and in Dunedin it was an intermediate night.
It’s all very democratic. Players sit at any table and then toss a coin to see which pair sits North-South. The movements are complex but are designed to be fair. In Invercargill they had 18 tables and played an Appendix Mitchell with 2 board rounds, some tables sharing boards. North-South skipped a table each round. In Dunedin there were 20 tables and they played a Share and Bye Mitchell with one board rounds! There were 22 boards and we played the second last board against our first opponents and the last board at table 21 – n, where n was our pair number.
Both clubs had written bidding. Alerted bids were circled, self-alerting bids were alerted. STOP cards were used, but not by everyone – it didn’t seem like a useful thing. No system cards were used in Invercargill, basic ones in Dunedin. The bidding pads were pre-numbered with board numbers by South at the start of the night. This was very useful with the complex movements.
Nearly all played ACOL with weak twos. Some people in Dunedin were amazed that we used a NT range other than 12-14.
Most declarers touched dummy’s cards instead of calling for them. We were expecting this. Some did both.
South scored on the travellers, circling the number of tricks when the contract went down. East initialled the line. The procedures after the last round were different. In Dunedin, the table checked each line on the travellers for accuracy and South ticked it. In Invercargill South matchpointed the travellers by hand! I was amazed. Someone else at the table checked the calculations and the matchpoints were entered into the computer.
If you visit New Zealand I suggest you try their bridge clubs. You will be very welcome and it is fun.