Towie happened to be the venue for the first District event of the season: West Aberdeenshire v City. For us Townies, that meant we had the issue of getting there. With me sitting in the navigator's seat, that was not a problem. Towie is just three quarters of a mile South East of Glenkindie, which is just down the road from Kildrummy, which is in turn on the South turn off from Mossat... that's a six mile drive from Alford if you take the Bridge of Alford turn-off... you get the idea.
Calling the event West Aberdeenshire v City might give the wrong impression. It is certainly NOT a case of farmers going hammer-and-tongs against bankers (which, come to think of it, is something we'd pay good money to see if you swapped the table for a boxing ring... I'm sure someone at Sky is working on it right now) - it is for building friendships, good feeling and overall happiness amongst various bridge players that otherwise might not get a chance to meet each other. It is very much a social event. Yes, we were on a team comprising of 12 pairs against a team of twelve shire pairs. Yes, we played bridge against them and naturally had to try and win. But there are various levels of competition and various levels of competitiveness. These events are diplomatic ventures as much as anything else - one does one's best to play good bridge but it's not life-or-death.
There is no artificial line drawn between city and shire. I was born and bred in Aberdeen, and all year round I play bridge at Aberdeen and Phoenix. But there was a time when, owing to family links, I played exclusively at Ellon Bridge Club - a fact that meant I was generally asked by the shire Captain if I would play for the shire. It's still considered "eligible" for both sides and have been known to play for the City when they play West Aberdeenshire and against them when they play North. I've played both sides many times and don't know which side I'm on one year to the next.
First thing's first. (He says five paragraphs in...) There were twelve pairs on each team. That meant twelve pairs had to be selected. As our Selector operates a rotation policy, nobody is guaranteed a game. More specifically, nobody should be. There are some players within the City that feel that, as the "top" players in the City, they should be automatic selections. And maybe they would have a case if it really mattered who won. But it doesn't. Winning doesn't even make it onto the list of priorities in these events. It goes without saying that the twelve pairs we do select aren't going to play badly on purpose, so if we win, we win and if we don't, who cares? I say this as someone who always plays to win. Sometimes one plays to win not out of desire, but because it would be disrespectful to do anything else. Yes, at some level I wanted to win. But if I was offered a deal of losing the next hundred City v Shire matches I play in in exchange for winning, say, the Gold Cup once, that's a deal I'd happily make. So when it comes to selection, my view (which is shared by plenty others) is that we should not pick the twelve best pairs but the twelve friendliest. That's something some of these "top" players really need to catch on to. Furthermore, I would venture as far as to say that some of these players that think they should be automatic selections should not get a game even if the aim was to field our strongest possible side - all bridge players think they are better than they are. Some more than others. As for the saying: those players I refer to know who they are - that would be untrue. The point is they don't. But for the avoidance of doubt I will state that I am thinking of nobody in particular.
Second thing's second: Twelve pairs on each team requires a movement. We tried to employ the same movement as we always do for City v Shire (and North v Highland) events: Home team North-South at the odd-numbered tables, East-West pairs move two tables after each round with the boards (which there are two sets of to avoid sharing) moving one, and after six rounds we have Half Time. After Half Time, the home team are the same again while the away team move down one table from where they started and change orientation accordingly, and we have another six rounds with the same movement as the first half, at the end of which everyone has played every pair of the opposing team exactly once. How could that possibly go wrong?
Ah, well, us Bridge players are a simple folk. For one thing, the boards were hand dealt, which meant that we had to duplimate the boards manually - play our first board in the first round, make a copy of it on the corresponding board from the other set of boards, and go and trade that with the copy from our corresponding table (1 to 7, 2 to 8 etc) to get our second board; after which we have two sets of the same boards in play. Easy peasy for a young brain like me who had been through this rigmarole before, but unfortunately this was to push others to the threshold of confusion before we'd even finished Round 1. Things settle down as we continue on towards Half Time without a hitch. But then the changeover causes yet more confusion. Don't ask me exactly how it happened, because I don't know, but at one point we had one of our pairs sitting East-West at consecutive tables. We managed to fix this eventually, but not completely - we had one pair that sat North-South both times, and so did they - meaning there was one opposing pair that we played twice and one we didn't play at all. Whether it was what was printed on the table cards, or our ability to interpret them, that was at fault, I don't know. But the Captain of the opposing team (which was who we played twice) not being well-versed in the movement did create problems. By the time we had duplimated the boards for the second half, I don't know if everyone in the room still had it in them to play bridge. Conclusion: It doesn't matter how simple something should be; the more people you have to convey it to, the more complicated it gets. Just like the Liberal Democrats trying to explain their decision making to the general public - a good idea becomes a complete mess.
As in NOT the custom at such events, there was no catering. Most players brought their own or, if you were me, had a sandwich before leaving and hoped that would suffice until returning home. Luckily, someone had the idea to raid the kitchen for tea and coffee, resulting in possibly the best cup of tea I'd ever had - I have found which combination out of the milk and sugar options suits me quite by accident. To say the tea was so good is quite a compliment considering how long it had possibly been sitting there.
Bridge was played, but I can't tell you much about it, which is why the focus has very much been on the day in general. Hopefully we have gone a long way to convincing the Home Team that bridge in the city is not so different from bridge in the shire. All right, so we had to turn a blind eye to the breaches of law and regulation that comes with the territory in shire bridge. But all were things I have seen done in the city, by city players, and I don't say anything to them, either. After all, I am experienced at playing at Ellon where I have to grin and bear downright cheating on the odd occasion. As David Stevenson says in Bridge magazine: "Zero tolerance for rudeness; maxi tolerance for everything else". Folk who are used to playing in the country genuinely don't know any better when it comes to technical regularities and they might be more inclined to join us for a game if they can feel comfortable in the knowledge that they won't have the Director called over the moment they sit down. Most City folk are more easy going and friendly than we often get taken for and the minority, as I shall call them on this occasion, you come to recognise pretty quickly.
My partner for the day (I'm sure he won't mind being named here, particularly given how well he played), was Mike Hodder. It was our first ever game together so we played a nice and simple SA based system. One mini-misunderstanding occurred half way through the first half, when Mike opened 2 Clubs, and I responded 2 Hearts. Mike thought that showed the ace of hearts exactly whereas I was showing just one ace, but it led to the same thing - 6 Clubs making. The best play problem of the day was his so I can't remember the hand in enough detail to post here.
As I have said before, the score did not matter - to the point where I don't actually know what it was. I know that we were roughly 4500 ahead at Half Time, and I think the Shire clawed a little bit of it back in the second half - a few of our pairs bid a Grand Slam (Yay!), but then half of them came down (Oh...). Don't look at Me and Mike; the slam was East-West and we sat North-South defending 6NT.
That's the fun stuff out of the way; more serious competition to come...
Like the Phoenix Cup. This might have been a separate article had I actually finished writing on Sunday night/ Monday, but no. So, we started off with Round 1 of the Phoenix Cup last night. There was a good turn out: 16 pairs. As is the norm for the Phoenix Cup, we played a 3/4 Howell movement. The favourites, Jim and Jun (my favourites if not anybody else's) stormed into first place with a 64% score. Despite a gallant effort, Lessurl and I encountered too much bad luck to compete with that and had to settle for 59% in second place. We made mistakes, but not so much that we could've caught the leaders had we got them all right. We've won with less. If last night's results reflect the final standings then we won't have disgraced ourselves. Last year's joint winners finished 8th and 14th, which is probably a sign that there are twists and turns to come.
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