B.C. Junior Siamese Championship

The finals of the B.C. Junior Siamese Championship were held on January 13, 2002, at the Vancouver Bridge Centre. Originally the tournament was to consist of four players: Gavin Atkinson and Graham Sadoway, who qualified from the December 9, 2001 preliminaries, and Andrew Ho and Roman Jiganchine, who had been unable to participate in the preliminaries because of university pressures.

At the last minute, Jiganchine withdrew, and participants in the concurrent junior event were canvassed to find a replacement. There was no shortage of volunteers, and soon three more players were found. Of course a Siamese tournament needs either four or eight players, but fortunately Bruce Harper (former B.C. Junior Champion) and Tyler Johnson (former Canadian Junior Champion) were found to be eligible.

The tournament worked like this:

1. The players drew lots (from one to eight).
2. Normal round robin pairings (in the first round, 1 v. 8, 2 v. 7, 3 v. 6, 4 v. 5) were used to determine who partnered with whom each round.
3. Each team played two games against each other team each round.

In the end, each player partnered with every other player in the tournament, playing a total of 42 games. The time control was the (B.C.) standard of one minute per game, with two second increments for each move.

The event took about four hours to complete. In the end, Gavin Atkinson survived a late charge by Bruce Harper and took first place by the narrowest possible margin (leaving aside the possibility of a draw, of which there were none). The final results:

Gavin Atkinson:	30
Bruce Harper:	29
Andrew Ho:	26
Graham Sadoway:	25
Tyler Johnson:	22
Fanhao Meng:	16
Jason Lee:	10
Ben Daswani:	10

B.C. Junior Speed Championship

The finals of the B.C. Junior Speed Championship were held on January 13, 2002, at the Vancouver Bridge Centre, shortly after the conclusion of the B.C. Junior Siamese Championship. The tournament consisted Fenhao Meng and Jason Lee, who qualified from the December 9, 2001 preliminaries, Andrew Ho, seeded, and Ben Daswani, first reserve qualifier who replaced the second seed, Roman Jiganchine, who withdrew shortly before the event.

Pre-tournament favourite Andrew Ho had a tougher time than anticipated. He lost his four-game match to Fenhao Meng 2.5 - 1.5, but a playoff was averted when third runner up Ben Daswani scored his only victory in his final game against Fenhao Meng, giving Andrew Ho clear first.

The prestigious Dives, Grauer and Harper perpetual trophy, donated by the leading Vancouver law firm of the same name, thus graces Andrew Ho's mantle for the next year. In a post-tournament interview, Andrew admitted that while he had heavier trophies, he had none larger. He also suggested that next year the Speed Championship be held before the Siamese Championship, rather than after it...

The final scores in the quadruple round robin:

Andrew Ho:	8.5
Fanhao Meng:	7.5
Jason Lee:	6.5
Ben Daswani:	1.5