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The 2000 Australian National Championships (ANC) is in Brisbane. The QBA website has some information here.

The ANC Junior Pairs this year will be a similar format to last year in Perth - two sessions on Saturday July 22 which will be a good warm-up for most of us and a chance to learn your partner's name for some! Hopefully not too many of us will be playing in the Open Pairs this year and we'll have a good competitive field. If anyone's found the trophy, I'm still keen to hear about it!

Then follows the main event - the ANC Youth Teams. Three 24-board matches a day from Sunday to Wednesday followed by two more on Thursday. With seven states entering teams this year (Queensland, New South Wales, ACT, Victoria, Western Australian, Tasmania and South Australia) the format will be a double round-robin. Twelve matches will be played, so each team will have two byes over the week.

As predicted, the normal vicious ANC Victory Point scale will be used. Instead of large swings being damped twice by the logarithmic IMP and VP scales, you get twice as much bang for your buck when the VP scale is linear: The winner gets 1 VP for each IMP of their winning margin up to 35, and then 0.1 VP for their next 25 IMPs. Anyone losing by more than 60 IMPs can take comfort that the maximum score for the lucky opponents is 37.5. That's the last comfort for them, though, because their VP score is -1 VP for each IMP lost up to 35, and then -0.1 VP for their next 50 IMPs. Nobody took me up on my earlier bet, so now I've got $50 that says that at least half of the junior matches will be lost by at least 35 IMPs. Any bet is redeemable only at the bar after the Junior Final.

Speaking of the Final, the two leading teams after the double round-robin go on to the three-session final on Thursday evening and Friday. The victor then emerges from behind the screens and it's off to the Victory Dinner for all that evening. The winners last year were Victoria thanks to their Swedish import, but how will they cope this year - with their talent drawn only from South Australia and Tasmania? Previous winners were NSW in 1998, SA in 1997 and WA in 1996 (thanks Paul). A list of the previous winners back to 1982 can be found here.

The Teams

One state has taken advantage of the decision to allow an overage player in the team - Chris Mulley should be a strong addition to an already very competitive Western Australian team. Here's hoping they stay jet-lagged!

Gabby Feiler and Daniel Krochmalik have performed strongly in NSW recently and capped it with winning the NSW Youth Trials. You can read all about their bidding exploits in the July issue of Australian Bridge out soon! Of note is newcomer Jonothan Dennis, playing with Chi Yan Tan. One can only speculate whether the pair who played "Sandgroper" in the trials merely handicapped themselves or the team... we'll have to wait for the Final...

Victoria is raring to defend their title last year, having lured Arian Lasocki and Tim Johnson away from South Australia and Tasmania with a lucrative professional contract in the former case and a pink lollipop in the latter. Naturally the winner of the 1999 Australian Youth Masterpoint prize is ready to carry his team again - but will he cope with the vagaries of Tasmanian bidding?

Sadly, South Australia has been exporting some of its players again, with Arian playing for Victoria, John Maddison in Canberra but not playing and Nic Croft a deserving member of their Open team. Nonetheless they have an able leader in Luke Matthews and will be a team with new talent to watch carefully.

Tasmania has some of the usual suspects along, led by the pair of Paul Hunter and Anthea Rowberry. Adam Guarino-Watson and (hopefully) Alex Butterfield are back in the team after a three-year retirement following the 1997 Sydney ANC. I'm sure you'll all find Adam a changed man (what, no beret?). From bitter personal experience, I can warn you all not to underestimate newcomer Allan Greenwood!

The home team are making a reappearance - it's been five years since the last Queensland team and only Craig Suthers has survived the haiatus. We welcome Craig back to the Junior fold and look forward to meeting the rest of the team in Brisbane!

ACT too, has resorted to importing talent from overseas, with Jillian Hay and Mark Abraham pairing up to draw the trials with Griff Ware and Daniel Geromboux. Making up the team are the new pair of Robin Stevenson and Michael de Livera - the latter at least we know has good genes for success! Sadly this will be the first ACT team for many years not to have Christy Bridgland in the team, but she will make an appearance in the ANC Junior Pairs.

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