Janet de Botton

One of my favourite Bridge proverbs is ‘Play the card you’re known to hold’. It doesn’t mean we should blithely give away cheap tricks, but when our cards are equal, we should follow with the one that everyone knows we have anyway. Applied correctly, this technique will make you much harder to play against, and there are virtually hundreds of situations where it applies. Most of the time the gain will be small — just creating some uncertainty for the other side, and giving them more of a guess — but occasionally the swings can be gigantic: As we can see, there was no holding back in the bidding — from either side. The play didn’t take long either; South won the Spade lead, went to dummy and ran the ♣9.

The first serious F2F bridge tournament we have played for almost two years was the Premier League last weekend. Whatever anyone says, live playing is a totally different game. The atmosphere was bubbling with excitement as the post mortems outside unravelled the tricky hands. The beginner’s mantra, which holds true at any level, is count your tricks in No Trump and count your losers in a suit contract. But sometimes the losers seem to float around and swap places with each other, as on this hand from the first weekend played by my teammate Espen Erichsen. West led the ◆Q, taken by South. Declarer could see two losers in Hearts, at least one in Spades and possibly one in Clubs, so the contract seemed to depend on the location of the ♣K.

The end to the European Championships Qualifier — from an English perspective — was one of the most dramatic ever witnessed. England had been struggling and was out of the top-eight qualifying places — in ninth, eight VPs behind Hungary in eighth place. With only one ten-board match to go, against Germany, things looked bleak, and with nothing much happening on the first nine boards, England could do nothing but pray for a miracle. And a miracle they got! This was the very last board of the tournament (see diagram). David Bakhshi and Tom Townsend sat N/S for England. Bakhshi took a practical shot at 6♥ at his second turn. There wasn’t much to the play (although three declarers managed to go down in 6♥).

So, face-to-face bridge is slowly returning, with EBU’s Summer Meeting in Eastbourne being one of the first to take place. The numbers were small of course, but at least it’s a step in the right direction. The Swiss Pairs on the first weekend for the Harold Poster Cup was won by England International Claire Robinson and Szczepan (Saucepan) Smoczynski. Saucepan may at times use his bidding box more as a weapon than a means of communication, but he’s an outstandingly talented card player. Here he is wowing the field. All but two tables played the standard 3NT, and all got the same Heart lead. Let’s follow the normal line of play first, so we can see the problem. South wins the Heart and plays Spades, overtaking the Jack of course.

Most of us have lost a year and a bit, but hopefully we will get back to normal (bridgewise) fairly quickly. Spare a thought, though, for the juniors, who have lost out on a World Championship that can never be recovered for those who will be too old when the next one comes around in three years. The Chairman’s Cup, played on RealBridge, became something of a substitute tournament, with free entry offered to junior teams from all over the world. They made up a healthy quarter of the field. The English U26 team had a storming tournament. They sailed through the qualifying Swiss, finishing third.

When I started learning bridge (about 20 years ago) I was taught the basic guidelines of play and defence and stuck to them rigidly. When I got out of the classroom and into the bridge club all my tried and tested rules were worthless — when they didn’t work. Third hand plays high — except when it should play low. Never give a ruff and sluff — except when it’s the only way to beat the contract. And my favourite: cover an honour with an honour — except when you shouldn’t. One of the things bridge players never seem to agree on is whether the 10 is an honour or not. The 9 comes even lower down the pecking order, only occasionally becoming a key player, as was the case on this hand from the London Online Congress teams’ event.

If someone had told me in February 2020 that virtually the whole world would be going into lockdown for well over a year, I would not have believed it was possible. But if someone had told me I would choose football over a bridge tournament, I would have laughed my head off. Well, I’m not laughing now. My heart (and my money) is with England, but sadly, as we all now know, they didn’t bring it home. I wouldn’t have missed it, though. I watched with a group of bridge players who all abandoned the green baize for Wembley. It was the first time I have seen most of them since lockdown struck, unless you count the Zoom post mortems that have been gathering online to discuss hands. Here is one of them: West started with a Club.

I have a confession to make. I did something I haven’t done for over 20 years: I went on holiday. A proper holiday. No bridge, no card games of any sort. No online kibitzing and no bridge reading or discussing. Just endless Covid tests and quarantine coming home — the only small problem being nothing to write about. ‘The Real Deal’ by Larry Cohen in the ACBL’s Bulletin magazine features one of the last hands played by the super-gifted Justin Lall, who tragically died last year, aged 33. West led the ♥A and Declarer (Justin) made a plan. He needed the diamond finesse to work but he also needed to keep his major suit losses to three.

Immense excitement in the relatively tiny world of bridge — the English Bridge Union has announced that the Premier League will be held face to face, beginning in September at the brand new Young Chelsea venue in London. Sadly not all our clubs will be reopening, the tremendous toll of the past 18 months having made many of them unviable. But it hasn’t been all bad; the three biggest pluses for me were brilliant online tournaments (even though the cognoscenti call them computer games with cards), no travelling and no fuming partners starting every sentence with: ‘Why did you…?’ And the three deal-breakers? Cheating, cheating and cheating.

It’s hard to think of anything more expensive at the bridge table than doubling the opponents and then watching them make because of your double. Oh, when will we learn to just sit back and take a small plus score? If the person you double also happens to be a world-class player, then you have to be prepared to swallow a pretty bitter pill. I was watching Thomas Bessis of France, playing a match with his father, Michel, and benefitting from a greedy and ill-chosen double. Bessis the younger was sitting South. He ended up in 4♥, rather excitedly doubled by West, and received the opening lead of the Ace of Diamonds which he ruffed.

We all know the importance of making a viable plan before we play. If a contract is poor and seems to have little chance, we must mentally place the cards where we need them to be and plan the play on that assumption. But if a contract seems solid we should imagine the worst possible layout of the cards and see if we can cope with that. The second part is harder; partly because we’re thrilled to be in a good (easy) contract and partly because of something which is known in the business as… laziness. There are no lazy players on Simon Gillis’s team — winners of this year’s online Schapiro Spring Foursomes. Here is Norwegian world champion Boye Brogeland in action. Boye was South and ended up in 4♠ with West leading a Diamond.

The Lady Milne is the annual Women’s Championship between the home countries (and Ireland) and is most often a two-horse race between the ‘Dragons’ (England) and the ‘Nessies’ ( Scotland). This year the event was held on RealBridge and — wouldn’t you know it — the two arch-enemies met in the last round with England having the slenderest of leads. The Scottish women needed to beat their English counterparts by at least four IMPs, and at the halfway stage they were up 14. In such situations, it’s not bad to have one of the world’s highest ranked female players, Sally Brock, waiting in the wings, this year in partnership with Nathalie Shashou who was making her England debut.

There are many drawbacks to playing bridge online but there is one thing that’s quite enjoyable: the speed and accuracy with which you can see your results — available as soon as a round is completed. Great fun when you have done something clever, not so thrilling when you are on the receiving end of an opponent’s brilliance or, worse, your own idiocy. The teams at the EBU Easter Online Festival was won by Simon Gillis playing with three top Norwegians. On today’s deal, his team mate Odin Svendsen brought home 5♣ in a most instructive way. I had a quick look online and, sure enough, only five of the 17 declarers playing in a Club contract made 11 tricks — the rest ten. How would you have done? (See diagram).

Bridge is a complex game, and is played by humans. Put those two things together and you have a guarantee that mistakes will be made. Whatever the strength of the partnership, making it easy for partner, and taking charge when you know the route, is absolutely vital. Here is a hand from a high-standard Mixed Online event that was played last week. West was male and East female. West led his partner’s suit to the Ace and Declarer’s nine. East’s Ace is suit preference for Hearts, and is a good and helpful play. She made another good choice when she shifted to the ♣9, indicating nothing in the suit.

The Young Chelsea Knock Out is a terrific tournament, and the best thing about it is that the winners get invited to play in the prestigious Lederer Trophy, closed to all but top-flight home and international invited teams. Nowadays the format has changed to double knockout, and is highly successful and enjoyable. Hopefully, the tantalising bait of a place in the Lederer is still on the table. This hand, from our round two match against Kath Stynes’s team, was handled expertly by both my team mate Thor-Erik Hoftaniska and by Kath, who, at the other table, reached exactly the same end position (see diagram). The defence started with two rounds of Diamonds, Kath ruffing the second and tested trumps, discovering that West had a trump trick.

One benefit of lockdown is that there is much more time for reading. My personal favourite bridge book is Play These Hands With Me by Terence Reese. Reese was the first author to introduce the ‘over the shoulder’ approach when explaining a hand — meaning the reader can follow the thought processes behind the bidding and play of many of his great hands. First published in 1960, it is now back in print after being unavailable for many years and if you haven’t already got it I can’t recommend it highly enough. Reese said: ‘You don’t have to be able to see the endplays that may crop up — all you have to do is follow normal good technique and watch what’s going on.

The late, great Martin Hoffman always claimed he was the unluckiest player in the world. If he was playing rubber, he moaned he never picked up a hand and if he did his partner passed. If he was playing duplicate with a sponsor, finesses never worked for him, suits never split and slams went off. We’ve all been there — and we have all moaned about our terrible luck. But I must confess that when he showed me this hand I had some sympathy. Martin was sitting East and ‘for once’ had an opening hand, but his excitement was short-lived when South overcalled 1NT and they bid to game via the transfer to Spades. South thought for some time over 3NT, but finally decided to leave it with her 4-3-3-3 shape. This was the first disaster, as 4♠ has no play whatsoever.

The Young Chelsea Bridge Club is moving — literally and figuratively. They are relocating to the Salvation Army building in Hammersmith, which will give them a sensational new space when Covid releases us. Under the auspices of the lovely new manager, Ollie Burgess, the first ever Under-26 online duplicate took place and was a thundering success. Run by juniors for juniors, nearly 40 pairs logged on to RealBridge (after first registering on the YC website) and hopefully as many U26s as possible will make Friday evenings a diary date. Today’s hand is a junior’s dream. Lots of shape, light on points and an exciting auction. Of course bidding the slam is one thing — making it is quite another.

When bridge moved from actual tables to virtual tables last March, it quickly became clear that cheating was ruining the online game. Boye Brogeland, who was instrumental in exposing the 2015 cheating scandal, became involved in combatting this potentially fatal flaw of Covid bridge in June last year. He became part of the Credentials Advisory Team (CAT), which conducted exhaustive checks of players’ past hands and stats and recommended who should be invited to play in the Alt and OCBL online events. As in 2015, he was greatly assisted by Thomas Charlsen, who had the idea of making an umbrella organisation that would license players who wanted to play in major online tournaments, launching the World Bridge Tour this month.

’Tis better to give than to receive, the Bible teaches us. Well, not if you were me this Christmas, it isn’t. One of the local Norwegian bridge clubs organised a big (online obvs) pairs tournament to raise money to train their juniors. To do this they auctioned more than 70 A flight players from all over the world and I was given European and world champion Espen Lindqvist as my Christmas gift! Espen’s regular partner is Boye Brogeland and together they have represented Norway in every major international event for the past decade. The final count was 174 pairs, playing 30 boards at matchpoint scoring, and we came third, with 62 per cent. Of course we were lucky and were given a few gifts, but often good play and good luck go hand in hand.