Janet de Botton

This summer was the longest I have gone without playing bridge since I began about 20 years ago. Not one single game, unless you count Bridge Baron, the computer programme that generates billions of deals to hone one’s skills and fend off withdrawal symptoms. Since my return I’ve hardly had time to unpack: both TGR’s and Young Chelsea’s autumn leagues have started, the EBU’s Premier League kicked off last weekend and we will be playing the Vilnius Cup when you (I hope) read this.   The Premier League is the contest that decides who will play for England in the Camrose Trophy (the home nations championships). There are now three divisions (eight teams in each) and it is played over three weekends.

The 43rd World Bridge Championships held in Lyon has just ended after two intense weeks and hundreds of boards. The first week saw 22 teams from around the world play a complete round robin, the top eight qualifying for the play-off. The USA entered two teams, both of whom made the quarter-final, but only one made it the whole way. USA2 had an extraordinary success, particularly in the semi-final playing against Bulgaria. About halfway through they were 46 imps down, with their prospects looking bleaker by the minute. Marty Fleisher was playing with the great Chip Martel, who won his first world title in 1985. Marty decided a big swing was needed to inject some life into his ailing team. This is the hand that, IMHO, changed the momentum of both the match and the tournament.

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.

Thank heaven I am on holiday! For the past week I have been up until 4 a.m., glued to the BBO coverage of the Spingold Knockout Teams, the main event of the ACBL’s Summer Nationals, held this year in Toronto. In the very first round of 128 there were two major upsets: the Strul team, seeded 4th and the current Reisinger champions, were knocked out by the number 103 seeds; and the mighty Monaco team (previous winners), seeded 14th, lost to team Jolly (I bet they were), seeded 93rd. In the following week, the 60-board-a day knockout culminated in a thrilling final between teams Lavazza and Diamond, won by Diamond literally on the last board of the most exciting final set I can remember.

The first week of July is heaven for those of us who don’t normally hear the words ‘bridge’ and ‘holiday’ in the same sentence. Off we trot to Biarritz to walk on the beach, eat delicious food and, at around 4.30 p.m. every afternoon, take a stroll in the sun to the old Bellevue casino to play some bridge — finishing in time for dinner ofc. Back home the LMBA held their London Swiss Congress last weekend at YC — no walk on the beach that. Swiss is a punishing format; you continually play people with the same score as you so the last couple of matches can often decide the winner. In the Sunday teams one team had been leading for most of the day.

The European Open Pairs, the final event in Montecatini, was a long and arduous five-day slog, three of those days qualifying about a quarter of the field for the two-day final. Long Pairs events often feature a period when things are tough and it seems impossible to get any Matchpoints. How you play during these spells can define how you do in the event overall, but sometimes it can seem like the Bridge gods are conspiring against you. Today’s hand features young English talents Ed Jones and Tom Paske, who reached the final the hard way — by winning semi-final B, which qualified only six pairs — and another London-based pair whose luck had deserted them: West started with the ♣K. Tom won, cashed A, K of trumps and played ♠Ace and ruffed a Spade in dummy.

The past two weeks have seen hundreds of passionate bridge players head for Montecatini in Italy for the 8th European Open Championships. The first two events, Mixed Teams and Mixed Pairs, had possibly the most exciting finals of all time — both successful gold medallists winning on the heart-stopping last board. The Pairs saw Poland’s Justyna Zmuda and her partner Michal Klukowski beat Germany’s Sabine Auken and Roy Welland by 1.27 IMPs on the last deal, while in the Teams the Russians (MNEPO) took gold from the clutches of the American/Swedish group led by Andrew Rosenthal, also on the very last board! There has seldom been more excitement, even if you were only watching on BBO.   But back to the qualification.

Every time I read Andrew Robson’s bridge column and he mentions that ‘a reader from wherever’ sent him an interesting hand, I feel the putrid green god of envy enter my body and make its way slowly into my heart. Why? Why him? I ask myself. Why doesn’t some reader from ANYWHERE send me a hand? Is it because he’s a better player than me? Is it because his column is better than mine? Nah. Can’t be. Well — it happened. A reader has sent ME a hand (eat your heart out, Robbo). Well, not really a reader — more of a friend, actually — and one I wrote up very flatteringly not so long ago.

The last days of May see all the ongoing tournaments coming to an end: both TGR’s and Young Chelsea’s Super Leagues are drawing to a close for another season and the main tournaments, my favourite being the Schapiro Spring Foursomes, are over for another year. There are European and World Championships coming up over the summer but this time of year always feels a bit like the end of term — and not in a good way. Last week Young Chelsea held its spring half marathon, 12 hours of non-stop bridge, which can be played as a pair or a threesome. Traditionally, this has been won by male bridge players, well tanked up and not too bothered about sleep. Not this time. The winners were Peter Taylor, John Fox and the wonderful Fiona Hutchison.

I realised long ago that I almost never play bridge with a partner worse than me. Occasionally, I cut a palooka at rubber bridge — but they probably think the same about me. I mainly play with professionals and they always have something kind and constructive to say when the defence goes pear-shaped: ‘Cover an honour with an honour’ or ‘Why did you cover dummy’s Queen?’ ‘Ducking is for experts’ or ‘Why didn’t you duck?’ ‘You must split your honours’ or ‘Why on earth did you split?’ And my favourite, ‘Never lead a singleton trump’ or ‘You had to lead your (singleton) trump.’ It’s properly doing my head in!

Last week we played round four of the Gold Cup. I had eagerly looked at the email to see who we were up against and for the first time ever we had drawn… Susanna’s team! Her partner was rubber-bridge maven Graham Orsmond, with Brian Ransley and Brian McGuire at the other table. The match was 48 boards and after 32 we were slightly ahead. The most dangerous opponents in a knockout match are those who are prepared to push the boat out to make up some ground. The two Brians are not afraid to put up a fight, and so it was, with 16 boards to go, that they came out all guns blazing on this hand: West led ♣7. This contract needs a few good things to happen, including Declarer not misplaying.

Bridge 24 was set up seven years ago by four Polish internationals who wanted to bring the glory days of the Eighties and Nineties back to Polish bridge: teach kids, organise seminars and start winning medals again. They have succeeded magnificently. Poland are the reigning world champions and Michal Klukowski, at 17, became the youngest gold medallist of all time. Last week they held their flagship tournament in Warsaw. Five days of top-quality Teams and Pairs, with a pro-am thrown in for good luck.   Pitting your wits against some of the finest players in the world is an exhilarating experience.

‘Ducking is for experts. Don’t try it.’ So says my partner Artur Malinowski every time I duck a trick in defence and let the contract through. Nice to know that experts also get it wrong, as was spectacularly demonstrated in the semi-final of the Vanderbilt Teams held in Kansas City recently. The two Davids (Bakhshi and Gold), playing for the Schwartz team, bid a tad enthusiastically to slam, missing two aces. The defence took the first one, and at trick four, after pulling trump, Bakhshi played a diamond towards dummy’s King and West (Swedish international Johan Sylvan) went into the tank. ‘What are you thinking about?’ I screamed at my computer. ‘You’ve got the Ace. It’s the setting trick in slam.

Tournament bridge players do not expect, or get, much in the way of luxury. I have played in some of the scuzziest venues imaginable (don’t get me started on Tromso’s Portaloos or Menton’s suffocating heat), so it is a rare treat that sponsor Simon Gillis’s Lederer Memorial Trophy is held at the super elegant RAC Club. The ten invited teams have to observe the strict dress code, which is a welcome change from some very grubby T-shirts! The scoring is IMPs and Board-a-Match, which means it is important (as in Matchpoints) to compare your spot with what may happen at the other table.

February is probably the most exciting and glamorous month in the bridge calendar. A couple of weeks ago, über-sponsor Pierre Zimmermann held his Cavendish Monaco Teams and Auction Pairs tournament, which attracts the best players in the world, all vying for a chance to pick up the big player’s pot or score in the auction. I played the Pairs with my regular victim Artur Malinowski — known by all as Bidonemoreski!   Mind you, it’s very tempting to overbid playing with Artur; his declarer play is so brilliant and he seems to conjure up tricks from thin air. Occasionally, when my dummy goes down, his ‘Thank you, partner’ has the ring of a cat being strangled, but heigh-ho, he usually brings home the bacon.

What can be more regrettable than picking up a huge hand and landing in the wrong contract?   It happened to me recently in a Hubert Phillips match. I had a 3-3-5-2 twenty-four count, all Aces and Kings, and my left hand opponent opened 3♠ which was raised to game on my right. I gave it a proper think and emerged with 6NT. Wrong! 7 Diamonds was laydown but 6NT had no play. I still feel sick!   In the third division of the Norwegian premier league recently, a hand came up that was so extraordinary it provoked a global ‘what do you bid?’ contest. You are sitting South, and Partner, first in hand all vulnerable, opened 4♠. East passed and you hold:   (See diagram)   Before you read on, what would you bid?

Not surprisingly, Reykjavik has become a tourist destination again. Delicious restaurants, all those geysers and, if you’re lucky, the Northern Lights come out to play. But for bridge players there is another incentive to get out your warmest parka — possibly my favourite bridge tournament of the year held on the last weekend of January. Sponsored by Icelandair, it kicks off with two days of pairs and continues with another two days of teams. It always goes by so quickly that the Brits on the murderously early flight home on Monday morning all commiserate with each other that it’s a whole year till the next one.

The Friday night IMPs game at the Young Chelsea is still the best game around. Some of yesterday’s internationals may have been replaced by tomorrow’s, but it remains pure, unadulterated fun! The newest superstar in town is French Junior sensation Christophe Grosset, married to our very own Alice Kaye. On today’s hand, he refused to admit defeat when things were going well for declarer, and came up with an imaginary false card that led his opponent astray: Christophe was West, and led the ♣Jack, East unblocking the ♣Queen under dummy’s Ace. South started brightly with a Diamond to his nine, West winning the King and continuing Clubs. Declarer threw a Spade from dummy, won the trick with his King and tried a Heart to the Jack.

Simon Gillis’s team has had a very successful year. They won the Gold Cup (for the second time), they joined the Premier League in the second division and got promoted, and they won the team’s event in the 2015 London Year End congress. This year the congress went slightly askew for him. His 16-year-old son Theo has taken up bridge and is clearly a natural. Playing with Liam Sanderson, Heather Bakhshi’s son and also very talented, they did quite a lot better than Simon and Norwegian International Eric Saelensminde in the Open Pairs; so much so that Simon’s other regular partner, Espen Erichsen, now calls him the second best player in the Gillis family! Many good bridge players are encouraging their children to play tournaments with them.

Simon Cochemé, whose witty column appears monthly in English Bridge magazine, celebrated his 70th birthday with a knees-up and duplicate at Young Chelsea at the end of November. The hands were ‘prepared’, each containing a problem of one sort or another, some well-known, others less so. The question was, would the players reach the intended contracts and recognise the problem, or would they find their own unique way to get lost? The party was overseen by club manager Nick Sandqvist, who, when he heard thunderous laughter from one table, went to investigate. This was the hand: South played in the intended 3NT on a Heart lead. Seasoned bookworms will recognise the problem: the defence will duck one round of Clubs.