John and Kelan O’Connor, Denis Sheehan and Donal O’ Sullivan won the team championship at Tralee congress which ended last Sunday. Undefeated throughout the competition, they had the title in safe keeping starting the last round, and finished well clear of Willie Corby, Doreen McInerney, Tom Hardiman and Chris Walsh, who just held on to second place from Phyllis O’Regan, Kay Clement, Betty Cotter and Jean Kelly, who finished strongly.
Leading senior players Donal Garvey and Pat Quinn won the congress pairs event, finishing well ahead of Marian Croke and Bríd Kirby, with O’Regan and Clement taking another third place.
In the intermediate pairs contest the scorers failed to separate Bernie Halloran and Dermot Lucey and Marian Coy and Deirdre McCoy, who shared the first prize. Pat Twomey and Donal Murphy were third.
Other prize winners from Tralee included: Mixed pairs: 1. Peter O’Meara, Una O’Gorman; 2. Nicky Fitzgibbon, Jean Sayers; 3. Eileen Murphy, Pat Downing.
Novice pairs: 1. Marion O’Dowd, John McEnery; 2 Mary Walsh, Marian Dore.
Gilda Pender came from behind to tie with Tomás Roche and share the overall prize in the Regent bridge club’s summer festival of bridge which ended last Friday evening. Wojciech Gorczyca was third, and David Dunne fourth. The prize for the best female player went to Mary Trench, while Terry Walsh was best male.
The Contract Bridge Association of Ireland’s first major event of the season, the open pairs championship for Duais an Uachtaráin, will be contested at the Hodson Bay hotel, Athlone, on Saturday and Sunday, September 22nd and 23rd. Entries to competitions@cbai.ie
The Irish Bridge Union's trials to select a team to represent Ireland in the 2019 European mixed-teams championships will be held at the Galway Bridge Centre, starting at 10.30am on Friday, and continuing until Sunday afternoon.
Also from Friday to Sunday, the Northern Ireland autumn congress will take place at the City Hotel, Derry, with separate congress, intermediate A and intermediate B pairs competitions starting at 7.45pm on Friday and continuing on Saturday at 1.30pm. At 11am on Saturday Northern Ireland international player Ian Hamilton will conduct an analysis on the hands played on the previous evening.
A mixed pairs event will begin on at 7pm on Saturday. The congress will end with the team championship commencing at 11.30am on Sunday.