Janet de Botton

When I first started playing bridge, about 15 years ago, I ‘trained’ at TGR’s rubber bridge club, which was located in a dingy basement in Bayswater Road. I didn’t notice the dinge — I felt intoxicated just walking in there knowing I would get a game. In those days we could smoke in the back room, Richard Selway was the loveable host with the sharpest wit around, and there was a big game going every day for a minimum of £50 a hundred. About eight years ago, we moved to the New Cavendish Club, smoking was banned, Richard died and the big game decreased to £30 a hundred.

When I was growing up, the loudest, most explosive arguments erupted when my parents played bridge together. Not surprisingly, when my father offered to teach me I made my excuses and ran. Jasmine Bakhshi is in the lucky position of having David for a father. Not only is David on the England Open team that wins practically everything they enter but he is also an excellent teacher. And what a pupil he has in ten-year-old Jasmine. At the Easter Festival in London she played with 15-year-old Isaac Channon in the Under 19 Pairs Championship, which they won, making her the youngest ever holder of that title. She first showed an interest in bridge about 18 months ago and this was her second tournament. The gal’s a natural.

Wednesday night is league night. Sacrosanct. I’ve missed only one in seven years and that was when my daughter was giving birth. Priorities, you know. But last Wednesday I had an offer I couldn’t refuse: dinner with Henry Kissinger. Not a date, I reluctantly confess, a smallish dinner, but you can’t have everything. He may be 91, but boy does he still have ‘it’! Ooh, the voice. Ooh, the brain. Ooh, the twinkle. I gushed inwardly like some bodice-ripping Poldark groupie. But I have to admit, when talk turned to world defence, my thoughts drifted away momentarily to bridge defence and how everyone says it’s the hardest part of the game. Certainly it is for me.

You either love rubber bridge or you hate it. Personally I love it: I love the freedom it gives you to play when it suits you. I love the fact that you play with and against different players, which certainly keeps you alert and hones your ‘table presence’. I love the fact that it gives you the opportunity to play with world stars who are passing through (Bob Hamman, for example) and I love the frisson that playing for money brings to the game. Believe me, after you’ve gone for a telephone number a couple of times and written out the cheque, you learn pretty quickly. It’s the best training in the world for Teams playing — and probably the worst for Pairs as overtricks don’t count.

What a week it’s been. On Thursday night the incomparable Terry Hewett held her annual charity bonanza Night of the Stars in which 52 bridge luminaries (well, 51 and me) were auctioned to non-professionals, raising a record £50,000 for four charities. I played with the heavenly Bernard Themis, who should have learned his lesson as he invested in me two years ago! Thank you, Terry. Nobody does it better. Then last weekend ten teams were invited to play in the Lederer Memorial Cup held in the fabulous RAC club, which can only be described as a real privilege. My friend Simon Gillis is the new sponsor and provided a tournament to remember.

Couples that play together stay together is not a mantra you hear too often in the bridge world. Indeed most couples who play together come closer to murder than to renewing their vows. The shaking head of the male. The withering comments. The relentless hand-hogging. Even demure little me has thought about whether a life sentence would be preferable to another board. But over the past few years an interesting phenomenon has occurred. Roy Welland and Sabine Auken got together, and formed a formidable partnership at the table too. They are the current European Open champions, play on Germany’s national team and have won countless major tournaments. Clearly, ‘What do you bid on this hand?’ is their preferred pillow talk. Now we have our own version.

There is something decidedly Groundhog Day about the international bridge calendar. The second weekend of January is TGR’s Auction Pairs and the last weekend is Iceland’s wildly popular four-day Pairs and Teams tournament.  Everything ticked along happily in the same vein as every other year. Two days of Pairs (in which we came nowhere) and then an unexpected but very welcome turn of events: we won the teams! I played with Artur Malinowski — Thor-Erik Hoftaniska and Thomas Charlsen our teammates. Here is Artur showing that great players rarely have to guess because they pay attention to every detail: Lots of people had lots of ideas on how to bid this hand. Some passed intending to come in with a two-suited overcall when they got the chance.

2015 got off to a rollicking start with TGR’s sixth Auction Pairs — chief rollickers being the Norwegians, whose unparalleled appetite for the sauce and disdain for sleep is matched only by the brilliance of their play. Leading the 70 pairs after the first day were Frank Svindal and Tom Johansen (bought in the auction by their buddy and like-minded rollicker Thor-Erik Hoftaniska), neither of whom let the small matter of an hour’s sleep cramp their style. No early nights with a steaming mug of Bovril for them. Off they went to enjoy the watering holes of London almost until it was time to play the second day.

The last tournament of the year is the hugely popular one-day Swiss Teams in the EBU’s Year End Congress in London. I normally play all four days (two pairs events preceding the teams) but this year I limply decided to take a longer Christmas break and was raring to go for the Teams. The first person I bumped into was my co-columnist Susanna, playing with the great Sally Brock, Frank To and Barry Myers. Seven matches were played in total and Susanna’s team won the first six to find themselves lying third with one match to go. The top five teams were very close going into the last match but Susanna’s team played a blinder to take the cup. Brilliantly done, guys. One thing is certain: the more chances you give your opponents to go wrong, the more often they will oblige.

Pierre Zimmermann, captain of the hugely successful Monaco team, plays with Franck Multon and they are probably the best sponsor/professional partnership in the world. Franck occasionally partners a somewhat less gifted lady who, after he opened a minor, bid 3NT. He put dummy down and left the table. When he returned, she had gone one down and he informed her that her bidding was totally wrong and that if she ever bid 3NT over his suit opening again he would leave and not return! Sometime later she was playing with another world-class partner who, when she opened 1♦, immediately jumped to 3NT. ‘You should NEVER make that bid,’ she admonished him. ‘It is totally wrong. Franck Multon told me that himself!

Last weekend saw the start of the Tollemache qualifier, the inter-county teams of eight championship. Thirty-five teams competed in four groups, the top two in each group going through to the final in February. Four members of my team were picked to represent two different counties: London and Middlesex. One of them (too grand for the band) was moaning like mad about having to go, but in the end came back thoroughly happy with both himself and the event and — I’m pleased to report — both their teams qualified for the final. In today’s hand Waseem Naqvi, for Middlesex, made declarer regret thinking things were going well, by finding a nifty false card that defeated a laydown 3NT.

It’s always good to know where you draw the line and my line, drawn in thick black ink, was going to China to play the World Championships. I last went to the Far East in 1997 and I’m still not fully over the jet lag. As Victor Silverstone told me in slightly less exotic Peterborough, ‘It’s a long way to go for a game of cards.’ Next up to Solihull (I know — the glamour) for the final weekend of the Premier League. We had been unceremoniously booted out of Division One last year and had to be in the top two to get promoted. Mission accomplished! This board, played by my teammate Tom Townsend, was much discussed later and even double-dummy it was hard to find a way home: West led the ♣2.

Every obituary written about Tony Priday, who died recently aged 92, said what a class act he was. I would like to add my tuppence to that observation. When I first started playing, around 15 years ago, I played against Tony and his wife Vivian at a Young Chelsea duplicate. I was keen as mustard and read everything I could get my hands on — most of which I didn’t begin to understand. I had read about jettison plays and, idiotically, jettisoned what I thought was a blocking Ace in dummy, forfeiting my contract and looking a total muppet. ‘Ah I see what you were doing. Good idea — wrong moment,’ he said, ‘not many people would have thought of that.’ I bet they wouldn’t!

The EBU’s Premier League is upon us again, the pain of relegation ever-present as my team battles it out in the second division to try to finish in the top two and earn promotion. After two of the three rather endless weekends (a triple round-robin if you please) we are lying well and… let’s hope it doesn’t go pear-shaped again. This hand caused the most discussion, played by my teammate Nick Sandqvist. Our opposition cleverly pushed us to slam whilst many tables were allowed to play in game. Nick ruffed the Heart lead and saw that the problem was to avoid losing two Diamond tricks. Spades offered a reasonable shot at throwing West in, so after eliminating Hearts he tried three rounds of Spades.

I don’t know about the only gay in the village but I am starting to feel like the last woman standing. In the two most recent events I have played, the Cavendish Pairs in Monaco and the superb Vilnius Cup, I was the only female playing and frankly, ladies, I missed you.   Vytas and Erikas Vainikonis invited eight of the strongest teams from Europe to Vilnius and treated us to three days of battling it out in a double round robin. Well, I won’t keep you in suspense any longer, WE WON! Here is my partner, the Great Malinowski, the only declarer in the room to bring home this contract. First let me say, before you write in, that this contract is cold off! As you can see, the defence have four hearts and two spades to take from top.

Many top bridge players are also keen poker fans, and when a poker star infiltrates their backyard there is a definite ripple of excitement. So it was at the hugely prestigious Euro Cavendish, held last week in Monaco, when Poker Champion Gus (the Great Dane) Hansen turned up to play. No one was more excited than my teammate Nick Sandqvist, who sat down to play him and asked for his autograph! ‘It’s for a boy I know at home,’ he explained unconvincingly. Gus, of course, obliged and they got down to play. Unfortunately, Gus was now in poker mode, and decided to bluff. He psyched a spade overcall with two, got raised to game by his partner who held King to five, got doubled, ran to his five card diamond suit at the five level, got doubled again and went for 1,400!

One person who lets out a whoop of delight when I am on holiday is my saintly partner, Artur Malinowski. He gets a holiday too — from me and my daft mistakes — and can play proper bridge with some of the greats who are dying to partner him. This time it was the turn of Peter Bertheau, Swedish World Champion, playing the Palace Cup in Warsaw. Sixteen world-class pairs competed for the coveted first prize, which was won by the young Polish stars Kalita and Nowosadzki.  Until the last session any one of five pairs could have won — Artur and Peter among them. I sent him a message to wish him luck and he replied that he was really having fun. Cheers, I thought. Never heard you say that when you’re playing with me!

It’s August — that time of year again — and I am in France, as usual, on my annual holiday. Hot sun, delicious food and drink, yet still the bitter shadow of envy casting its pall. I am missing Brighton and the two-week congress that everyone I know is playing. Many congratulations to my teammate, Tom Townsend, who won the Brighton Pairs, playing with Mark Teltscher. Tom’s immense experience helped him work out the best way to make East go wrong on this hand: 1♣ was prepared, and West’s choice of lead was the passive ♠5. Clearly, the defence have missed their best lead of a Club but the question was how to convince them to continue Spades, rather than finding the deadly switch. First, Tom played the ♠King from dummy.

Two very exciting tournaments drew to a close last week. The first was the Spingold, the main teams event in the Las Vegas Summer National, the final of which saw two top Norwegian pairs opposing each other. In the end the slight underdogs, Richard Schwartz’s team, prevailed over mighty Monaco. Closer to home, there’s no stopping English bridge at the moment. After our fine results in the European Championships, the Chairman’s Cup, Sweden’s flagship teams tournament, was won by three Englishmen and a Welshman — David Kendrick,  Michael Byrne, Mike Bell and Paul Lamford. Brilliant boys. Well done. Here is David, showing his eye for the game: David was South, and received the lead of the ♠3 to the Jack and King.

Richard Selway was one of the first friends I made in the bridge world. Long-standing ‘host’ at TGR’s, he was hilariously funny, irreverent, kind, a sensational natural player, and totally bonkers. I loved him. Sadly he died last week, on his own terms, having a fag in the care home where he had been looked after for the past year. His favourite story against himself was the time he rectified the count by ducking the first trick — in 7NT! Here is a hand he played many years ago, which shows Richard ‘knowing his customers’. Richard was South, of course, and his little ploy in the auction not only serves to increase the chances of playing 5♦ doubled, but also ensures that partner leads a Club if the opponents bid on.