The 2018 Mixed Pairs Championship was held at the Bridge Club last Saturday and when the smoke had cleared at the end of the second session Gertie Barker and John Burville emerged as the winners from the 20 pair field by just over a board from Molly Taussig and John Glynn in second who were narrowly ahead of Elizabeth McKee and Ed Betteto in third.

Finishing fourth, fifth and sixth were Judy Bussell — Charles Hall, Jean Johnson-David Sykes and Diana Diel — Joe Wakefield.

The winners led narrowly at the halfway point from Dorry Lusher and Michael Bickley after which there was a pretty massive gap to McKee-Betteto and Taussig — Glynn.

Taussig-Glynn put together a 61.66 per cent game in the second session but that fell short of closing the big gap and Barker-Burville’s 53 per cent second session was enough to see them through.

This was a good win for Gertie and John as the field had a ton of depth with all the leading players taking part and it was a real test with the play of 57 Boards in one day.

Thanks must go out to Jack Rhind for giving up a Saturday to direct the event.

John and Gertie are both experienced players with many titles to their credit and would have been in the top five fancied pairs at the start of the event.

In fact the entire group of placing pairs came with good credentials with no surprises on the leaderboard. Well done to all.

Next up at the club is a Teams Evening on Thursday, May 3 and then on the afternoon of Monday the 14th, the club is experimenting with a Member-Guest event of casual bridge to try and bolster membership numbers — more on that later.

This week’s hand is a declarer play problem

Dealer South N/S VUL

South opened 2NT (20-22) and North bid 4 hearts which was a transfer to spades.

After South bid 4 spades North bid Blackwood and went to 6 spades after South showed three key cards.

West realised that N/S had bid this slam on high cards and wisely chose the passive lead of a trump.

Declarer was an expert and saw that if spades were 2-2 he could draw trumps, eliminate hearts and then play a diamond to the queen to end up in this position:

Now any lead by West either gives declarer a minor suit trick and even if West had a heart to lead that would provide a ruff and discard.

Alas, trumps were 3-1 so it looked like declarer would need a finesse to work somewhere — and none of the cards were sitting well.

So declarer drew the third trump and realised that it was a no lose play to cash three hearts before taking the diamond finesse.

This he did and the queen lost to the king but lo and behold, without the last heart in his hand West was forced to lead a diamond into the A10 or a club into the AQ — 12 tricks.

No real magic in the play was there? Declarer just gave himself a free extra chance by cashing the hearts and was duly rewarded — a real lesson in careful declarer play.