The first weekend of August saw two big pairs tournaments, one in Oslo and one in Eastbourne, with remarkable similarities: both attracted over 200 pairs, both were the same format, Swiss, which means that apart from a random first round you are competing against the pair with the nearest score to you whom you haven’t met before; and after three days and heaven knows how many boards both were won by the same pair as last year! Alexander Allfrey and Andrew Robson in Eastbourne and father and son duo Tor and Fredrik Helness in Norway. Tor probably needs no introduction: he is the brilliant Norwegian multi world champ who has a combustible temperament and simply cannot understand when a partner doesn’t produce the same level of genius that he does. Fredrik is his calm as a waterlily (takes after mum Gunn) son who, when they needed three virtual tops to win, produced the result shown above.
Fredrik ended up in the normal contract, on the lead of the ♣K.
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