Commentary

Junior, Indi, and OscarJunior, Indi, and Oscar
Every night of The Waikato Interclub Teams in 2017 went really well. On the last Fridays of March to September twenty-four tables - just as many as the Richmond Room could hold - gathered at the Hamilton club and the atmosphere was just great! Aimed principally at Novice, Juniors, and Intermediates it was most heartening to see ten teams in the Novice/Junior, eight in the Intermediates, and six in the Open sections. Attendees enjoyed an excellent wine and cheese supper between sessions.

It was decided to play 24-board matches with a swap of opponents after supper. Over seven sessions this eventually led to a full Round Robin for the Intermediates, a pretty full one for the Junior (miss playing just two other teams) and a clear division into two triangles for the finals phase in the Opens.

To keep the scoring simple we used the Bridgemates for the Juniors only. The other two sections scored manually and had to agree their results in the time-honoured fashion at the end. This will be different in 2018 when Bridgemates will be available to all sections.

All the TWITs mascots shown were lovingly made and donated by Di Emms of Cambridge. The club with the best score in each section whenever we played got to take one for a month with the overall winning clubs, Hamilton (OSCAR and INDIE) and Te Aroha (JUNIOR) got to keep them for the Christmas break.