The hotel Melia Madeira Mare is an excellent venue for a bridge congress, with step-free access throughout. The rooms are spacious and comfortable (though some folk find the beds a little hard) and well-serviced; the food is excellent, with a wide range of choices on the buffet. Tonight’s paella was particularly popular.
The playing room is large and well-lit, with a copious supply of water and carefully cleaned between each session of play. It’s a pity there are only ten tables, but the bridge is played in a friendly atmosphere which well suits an overseas congress.
Today, we started on the more serious bridge, with the first five 8-board matches in the Swiss Pairs. By the end of the fifth match, four pairs had won four of them, and the three leading pairs were Chris Jones and Jan Duncan, Judy and John Brearley, and Chris Taylor and David Wing occupying the three leading places. But with five more matches to play, who knows what the final outcome will be?
This was a competitive hand from the afternoon session:
It would appear that the par score is 5Hx-1 by East, but no-one played there. Once again the North hand is distributional and huge in playing strength, though EW have considerable more high card points. 4S should make though at one table it went off three doubled. When NS bid to 4S, EW should compete to 5H, but that simply didn’t happen. On the other hand, at five tables EW were allowed to play in 4H.