Janet de Botton

Imagine you are on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?. You have just won £500,000 and cannot go home with less than £120,000. You use your last lifeline (50/50) leaving you a straight guess to become a millionaire or drop £380K. Even though it’s mathematically correct to guess, most people would take the money.   We bridge players are luckier. We have lots of clues in the bidding — or lack of it — the opening lead and the carding signals the opps use. If we find out as much as possible, the final answer is rarely a guess.   Both North and South pushed a fair bit to get to the lousy vulnerable game, against which West led the ♥9.

Jonathan Harris is a man of principle. He and his wife Jenny had each entered a team for the Venice International Festival of Bridge earlier this month. Five days of Pairs and Teams in a wonderful setting: beats working. Then came the news that Fulvio Fantoni, who had been found guilty of cheating by the EBL’s Disciplinary Commission in August 2016, was playing. He and his partner Claudio Nunes were banned from playing together for life and individually in any EBL event for five years. The ACBL banned them for life. They appealed to the CAS (Court of Arbitration for Sport — not a bridge player among them) who stated that the EBL’s decision was invalid and they could play, if invited.

When did International Women’s Day become an official fixture? I have never been aware of it before this year and I fumed noisily thinking how patronising it was, ranting on that men don’t have a special day as every day celebrates their importance. Wrong again. There is an International Men’s Day and, if you want to prepare early, it’s in November. ‘What am I getting for IWD,’ I asked my team before playing a fairly early round of the Gold Cup. ‘You get to play ONE hand,’ they replied (almost in unison), ‘in the match tonight. Try not to stuff it up.’ Today’s hand was (mis)played by both expert declarers in a recent match, and even in the postmortem most players got it wrong. How would you have done?

Susanna and I don’t play on the same team very often, but once a year Fiona Hutchison puts together a squad of eight to play the Garden Cities Qualifier — I’m not exactly sure what we were qualifying for but I think it’s possibly a second qualifier. It’s a lovely, fun, stress-free evening of bridge with people you don’t normally compete with, who are all super supportive: no one criticises anyone else, and you don’t go home hating yourself and hating your ‘never been wrong’ partner more.   So, everything was jogging along nicely. We played five boards against five teams and scored up afterwards in the bar. ‘Minus 200, sorry,’ I said writing –13 in the out column. ‘I was in a ridiculous 2♦ redoubled.

James Vogl excelled at poker and backgammon and thought, like many of us, that when he took up bridge about a dozen years ago, it wouldn’t be long before he excelled at that too. Always interested in the theoretical side of the game, he took as a mentor an American professional, Ron Von der Porten, known as VDP. Ron played rubber bridge in the low-stake game and regularly took the punters to the cleaners, pointing out all their mistakes along the way. They loved it! A few years after James started, VDP moved to Las Vegas but they continued practice sessions online. One day James called him and asked him to play the Cavendish Pairs held in Vegas, the world’s highest-paying and most prestigious Pairs tournament.

The winter ‘season’ of terrific bridge competitions came to a close last weekend with the Lederer Trophy held at the RAC Club in London. Generously sponsored by Simon Gillis and faultlessly organised by Ian Payn and Kath Stynes, it really is a pleasure for the ten teams lucky enough to be invited to play in it. It was a star-studded affair, the room filled with world champions from different countries. But the team that gets my vote for awesomeness is the eventual winners — the (reconstructed) Allfrey Team. Alex A. plays with the legendary Andrew Robson and their teammates are Tom Paske and Ed Jones, both in their twenties and it’s Tom’s first Lederer.

Two of the best (and most enjoyable) Pairs and Teams tournaments of the year have just finished, and I miss them already. Iceland Air’s Reykjavik Bridge Festival, where my teammates Thor-Erik Hoftaniska and Espen Erichsen won the Pairs, and immediately following it, Pierre Zimmermann’s Cavendish Monaco. The Cavendish Teams was won by the French foursome Vinciguerra, whose youngest player (by decades) is 29-year-old Cedric Lorenzini. The biggest difference in the past 20 years has been the development of highly disruptive bidding methods. Gone are the days when opener had the auction all to himself. The opps will parachute into any bidding sequence in order to get in the way or indicate a lead — particularly at favourable vulnerability.

The Norwegian Bridge Press Association’s annual prize for the best-played hand was a particularly hard-fought contest in 2018. Boye Brogeland and Geo Tislevoll (both Norwegian although Tislevoll now lives and plays in New Zealand) had already won the International Best Played and Best Defended titles, which made it likely that one of them would take their national honour as well. However, into the mix was thrown Tom Johansen, whose genius declaring a partscore in the final of Norway’s most prestigious knockout tournament gave him the title. The hand he played was stone-cold off on top and yet Tom found a way of disguising and camouflaging his cards so imaginatively that the opps had no idea they were letting the contract through not once, but several times.

2018 ended on a very sweet note for my team. We played the London Year End one-day teams tournament — and won! Highly enjoyable and highly satisfying. The perfect warm-up for the first weekend of the Camrose Trophy in Mold, North Wales, where I got my second England cap playing against the home countries. We played five 32-board matches and ended in second place, which is a reasonable position for the second weekend in March.   I played with my regular partner, Artur Malinowski, who never fails to dazzle at least once a session with his astonishing card-reading skills. Take a look at this slam.   My 3♠ bid showed both minors and hey presto, we were in slam.   West led a club and it looks like declarer needs ♠A or ♥K with East.

HAPPY NEW YEAR, EVERYONE!   I have made a resolution to make some bridge resolutions. Here they are:   1. When declaring, I will never again play to the first trick in a nanosecond. I will explain to the opps, in an insufferably smug tone, that I always take at least two minutes to plan the play. 2. I will NOT play for six hours a day and then hit Bridge Baron obsessively the minute I get home. 3. I will watch partner’s signals religiously, rather than pick at my chipped nail. 4. I will read more bridge books.   Today’s hand comes from Lukacs’ and Rubens’ Test Your Play as Declarer and neatly covers resolutions 1 and 4.   West led the ♥3 and the key play occurred at trick one.

This is my last column before Christmas (I know… I’ll miss you too) and as 2018 rolls to an end the only tournament left for me to play is the Year End Congress in London. I could have gone to Hawaii to play the Reisinger, main event of the American Fall National, but it’s too far and I’m barely over the jet lag from Orlando.   I have been following proceedings on BBO, and checking out the many other functions on the site while I’m at it. Fred Gitelman, the founder-manager, wrote a blog for many years and it makes fascinating reading. He highly recommends Test Your Play as Declarer by Paul Lukacs and Jeff Rubens and if today’s hand is anything to go by I can’t wait to get it.

DO NOT DOUBLE PARTSCORES WHEN PLAYING TEAMS. Here is Geir Helgemo somehow fooling his expert opponents into defending like total muppets… The bidding was only the beginning of Geir’s wizardry. He managed to bid not one but both of his three-card suits, North giving desperate preference to 2♥. The opps were then led a very merry dance. West led a trump and East won his ♥K and switched to the ♦7 covered by the ♦10. On the bidding this couldn’t be a singleton (South couldn’t have five diamonds and bid two other suits) so West put in the ♦Jack, won in dummy with the King. Next Geir played a cheeky trump towards his hand and when East reasonably ducked, won the Queen! Two tricks.

This autumn has been the busiest (bridge-wise) I can remember. It started with the Crockfords final at the beginning of September (we came second), then there was the World Championships in Orlando (we came nowhere) and the Pairs and Teams Grand Prix of Poland in Vilnius (we came second in both). We have just played the third and final weekend of the English Premier League, which we had been leading all the way, and we came… second, beaten by the strong Allfrey team by one VP. What a heartbreaker! Of course there was much discussion about the hands between rounds. Who was in which contract? Who had made? Who had gone down and why?

Vytas and Erikas Vainikonis, father and son bridge enthusiasts, are the generous hosts of one of the best five days of championship-level bridge in the calendar. Held in Vilnius (capital of Lithuania for my fellow geography dunces), it starts with 12 invited teams competing for the highly prestigious Vilnius Cup and follows on with the Pairs and Teams Grand Prix of Poland. One hundred and thirty pairs and 50 teams competed in these tournaments and attracted multiple world and European champions as well as regular bridge nutters like me and my friend Jonathan Harris. Of course, there was endless chat and analysing of hands and all their complexities. Today’s offering comes from the Grand Prix Pairs — and brought in different results from all round the room.

Good news for bridge if the Open World Championships in Orlando are anything to go by. Far from dying, it is spawning and nurturing young players who are making their mark spectacularly. In the first two tournaments (Open Teams and Open Pairs) Michal Klukowski (22) won his fifth world title on the Zimmermann team and the Swedish twins Mikael and Ola Rimstedt (23) chalked up their second gold medal this year, winning the Open Pairs.   In 2006 the Open Pairs in Verona was won by the (then) relative newcomers Fu Zhong and Jack Zhao of China. Here is Fu, 12 years later, showing he hasn’t lost his touch:   West led the ♣King which Fu ducked and continued clubs, clearing that suit.

I think my regular reader(s) would agree that I have been rather low-key about my bridge abilities of late. Defence for me became like a cataract-smitten eye trying to read the fine print — so much so that I began to bitterly judge myself Worst Defender in the Room every time I played. But that was then. Since returning from my five-week self-imposed bridge exile things are looking up. The first weekend in September was the Crockfords Cup final. Eight teams who survived the six or so knockout matches met up in one of the ghastliest hotels in England hoping to claim the trophy. Chris Jagger’s (no relation) excellent squad won and… we came second! Here is my defence epiphany: (see image).

All the best players today are technically excellent in card play. They know all the odds and end plays to bring home their contract or thwart the opposition so the important differences are often in the bidding. Finding the best game, slam or partscore, played from the right hand, is vital. But there is another quality that separates great and genius, a quality you can’t learn, and that is imagination. The gift of seeing the whole picture and finding a winning line which is not necessarily technically conventional. Geir Helgemo is widely acknowledged as the world’s No. 1 supremo in solving problems imaginatively. Today’s hand comes from his book Bridge with Imagination.   In response to partner’s lead-directing double, West led ♣4.

When I was first married, there were no satnavs to hold our hands; we relied on maps (if there was one handy) or trial and error. Whenever my husband wasn’t sure whether to go left or right he would ask me. ‘Left,’ I might say. He immediately turned right — and he was never wrong. I sometimes think of this when I am defending. In the two or three-card ending, if there is a choice I can be relied upon to do the wrong thing. So much so that I have tried doing the opposite of my instinct and, humiliatingly, it worked. Well, not so humiliating actually, as my partner doesn’t know my thinking process — just sighs with relief that another contract has not been let through.   I was given today’s hand by the late Martin Hoffman.

It’s that time of year again — summer and its attendant holidays. No bridge for me for a month, unless you count the odd tournament online or playing my favourite computer programme, Bridge Baron. I love the Baron, not only for the squillions of hands it throws up but also because you can play a hand any amount of times and if your finesses fail you can go back and try again! Today’s hand is one of those that looks relatively easy but I tried a dozen or more times and always went down. Then I gave it to Hoffer, the mighty Viking, who came up with a plan: [see image]. They say the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. I must be the poster girl.

Last Friday, merrily on my way to Young Chelsea (still the best IMPs duplicate in town), I couldn’t know that my very dull outfit would cause offence. I found a seat, and was sitting with my back to the room getting settled when the lovely new manager, Louisa, beckoned me over. There had been a complaint, she said, about my trousers! Apparently, someone had asked her to tell me that they were too low-cut, which resulted in a wardrobe malfunction visible through the cut-out in the chair. I can’t remember if she said they were distracted, disgusted or disturbed — let’s go with distracted — but what can he/she/they have seen? A wisp of undergarment? A smidgen of builder’s bum? Either way, it’s dungarees for me in future. But back to the duplicate.