APBF 2025
The Asia Pacific Bridge Federation championships are being held in Hefei, China this year. I'm in the New Zealand mixed team playing with Jan Alabaster. My wife Chisa and I arrived at the venue a couple of days early. It's no good travelling and then launching into bridge without settling in a little first.
It's just a game, I know, but it's a little simplistic to write it off as just that. All the players here will have put many, many hours, days, weeks, months, years and in most cases decades playing, studying and practicing to get to this level. Let's call it serious fun.
What tends to happen at long bridge events is that after a day or two the world shrinks. Suddenly it's just the cards, the score up, the inevitable discussion of hands and onto the next match. To be honest, I can't say I think that's altogether a good thing. I’m glad Chisa doesn't play bridge because I get some normality during the week. This morning we went to the gym together. Physical health is important, not just for bridge of course, but sitting for days on end playing cards takes its toll unless you're careful.
We went for a walk with Zachary Yan and he took that photo. He's from Auckland and also playing here. Zac is such a great guy. All the young kiwi players are so nice and doing well with their bridge. When I think of how I was when I was in my twenties I think I'd have to say they're all nicer than I was!
Friday, 11am
Shortly we'll be having a few warm up hands with some of the New Zealand contingent then I have a captains meeting where we’ll get told how all the admin things work.
Hopefully I'll be able to share some interesting hands and highlights as the week progresses. Talk soon!
Friday, 5pm
So we played 6 practice hands but I was dummy 5 times and simply followed suit as defender for the other one. Fine by me, I’ll be well rested for kick off tomorrow.
Not much happened at the captains meeting. Amusing to learn that if anyone wants to go to the bathroom during a match we have to ask the director and then be accompanied by a same gender member of the opposition team. It’s all to do with not passing information to team mates.
The draw was done at the captains meeting and we have three matches tomorrow. The last match is against China. In the match programme we were all given there are photos of all the players plus photos of the head coach of the Chinese mixed team. The head coach. They must have other coaches then. Maybe a declarer play coach. A defence coach. A leads against notrump coach. Luckily I already have a good method for leads against notrumps so I don’t need a coach. I simply use the leads against notrumps left hand rule of thumb. Basically I just look at my left thumb and lead whichever card is closest.
Heading out for some dinner now.
Friday, 9pm
You can't really see it on the photo, but trust me, those two towers are the hotel we're staying at and which is also the venue for the event. The text you see on the building is continuously scrolling and it reads 'Welcome to the 54th Asia Pacific Bridge Championships'. Pretty cool!