Help
in Kaohsiung from Mar 17-19 in beautiful tropical Taiwan. Of course,
we apologize for any mistakes [including two of our normally reliable
IBM ThinkPads going down on us], but the final between two World Class
teams where France [Chemla, Levy, Bompis, Quantin] overcome a 6.5 IMPs
carryover to defeat Poland [Gawrys, Chmurski, Kowalski, Tuszynski] by a
slender 0.5 IMPs over 32 boards, along with so much exciting bridge in
the course of three days, surely made this a worthwhile venture.
And I should take this moment also to thank all of those who assisted
our vugraph: Messrs Bo-Han 'bddream' Wang, Wei-Bung 'eieio' Wang and
Edward Yu-Chang 'Kyosuke' Huang, and Misses Heng-Tsui 'afa' Lin and
Yvonne Yi Chen (the last named four were former junior and/or ladies
internationals for Taiwan) and last but far from least, my wife Ping.
Each of them continuously operated the VG, caddied, assisted the CTD,
handled paperwork and computing tasks and even carried drinks to the
combatants. All mistakes are mine, and all glory should go to them.
There are some explanations that should come from the organizers -- we
were outside help recruited to do the VuGraph -- themselves, but they
may be less computer savvy, so let me be presumptous and tell you part
of what happened. The capable Mr. Lawrence Tu, who oversees computing
sections at Taiwanese tournaments, could not make it to the tournament
due to an emergency, throwing everything helter-skelter. Although the
Bulletins were edited very nicely by Mr. Paul Marston, and distributed
onsite, they were not put online soon enough and the other organizers
had trouble updating results on time, compounded by an outage of some
network provider that was hosting the initial tournament homepage.
We had originally been asked to do only the KO stages 1, 2, and 3, and
the final -- not the qualifying stages and the 3-way match between the
three remaining once defeated sides [KO4 in the chart]. Since we were
able to get enough hands on the scene, I lobbied to do the later part
of the qualifying & KO4, and the organizers agreed. As far as I know it
is the first ever threeway BBO webcast and the kids of BTU (the Bridge
Club at National Taiwan University) I had recruited were very proud of
having figured this out. We apologize again for any mistakes I'd made
and hope that you enjoyed the tournament from around the world.
This was the dramatic board 32 of the final, with France leading 0.5:
Imagine the atmosphere in the Vugraph theatre as the audience saw the
final board come up on the screen. Several boards earlier, the open
room had heard a commotion coming from the closed room. Clearly this
related to one of the very last boards. Quantin and Bompis sent for
the director [Richard Grenside of Australia] and asked him to silence
their vociferous teammate. So everyone was somewhat in anticipation
of a lively last board. And wasn't this a real doozy!
In the Closed Room, Tuszynski was on firm ground when he doubled since
south had denied a high spade honour. When west lead a diamond Chemla
had an immediate guess which he got not unnaturally wrong. Down two.
The French had to tie this result to pull out the match.
In the Open Room, when Chmurski doubled according to system (showing a
normal spade response; 1S would deny spades), the commentators started
talking about how lucky this was, as this allows the Poles to play 6Sx
from the correct side. However, former World Champion [7 of the 8 on
both finalist teams had been World Champions] Jean-Christophe Quantin
inserted a well-timed leap to 5H, which induced the SECOND of the two
misunderstandings the Poles had in this match on distinguishing grand
slam tries from choice-of-small-slams. Gawrys sealed his own fate by
going to the grand slam. The small but attentive on-site audience in
the VuGraph theatre exploded. Flat board and the match score remained
at 73:72.5 for France. Quantin's brave vulnerable leap had been worth
US$32,000 for the four winners.
Congratulations to France. They are worthy winners in 2006's Yeh Bros
Cup. Having came in 8th in the Swiss, according to the regulations of
this tournament, they had started as a once-defeated team in a double
elimination. They had won two head-on matches and two three ways [one
vs the powerful Canada (Kokish-Mittelman-Demuy-Wolpert) and Italy Two
(Garozzo-Sementa-de Falco-Lauria-Versace-Olivieri) teams] to reach the
final and then defeated a first-rate Polish team. Mr. Chen Yeh are no
doubt pleased that his US$42,000 purse (about EUR 33,000) went to very
good players and a world-class team.
Congratulations due also to the gallant Polish team for finishing high
in this class event. I felt for those guys who came so close -- I had
plenty of closes losses in my life, and I was sitting next to them in
the Open room. But they should console themselves with having won the
US$10,000 purse for second place. Thanks to Mr. Chen Yeh for generous
sponsorship and to all who participated and watched.
Bo-Yin Yang
["by" on BBO]
Open Room auction: Pass-1♣-1♥-1♠; 4♥-5NT-Pass-6♠; Pass-Pass-Dble-Pass; Pass-Pass. by Opening Lead ♦7, down two.
Closed Room auction: Pass-1♣-1♥-Dble; 5♥-5NT-Pass-6♣; Pass-7♠-Dble-Pass; Pass-Pass. Opening Lead ♥Q, down two.