The 2014 Open Teams Championship was held on Wednesday May 14 and Friday May 16.

The event was won by Tony Saunders, Charles Hall, John Burville and David Cordon. In second place was Vera Petty, Roman Smolski, Marge Way and Misha Novakovic.

Third place went to Sheena Rayner, Gertie Barker, Jane Smith and Alan Douglas.

This is an excellent win for the Saunders team as the field was one of the strongest that we have seen for a while with most of the leading players sitting to play.

The Bridge Club website does not carry the detailed results but I believe that the Petty team were leading after the Wednesday session with the Saunders team in fourth place.

Clearly, a strong finish by Saunders sealed the victory.

The winners are all experienced players with a lot of tournament wins between them, none more so than Tony Saunders who won his first Open Championship back in the 1960 era and represented Bermuda then and is still winning! John Burville and David Cordon won this event last year and for Charles Hall, this is the second Open Championship that he has won this year as he also won the Mixed Pairs. Congratulations to all!

Seven teams entered the event which was superbly run by Director Jack Rhind who even set up the second session so that duplicated boards were played with hand records — clearly his experience as a Director at our Regional pays dividends!

This hand came up on Bridge Base last week and it needed a bit of thought.

Love All. Dealer North

????????????????????????????????? J64

?Q4

• Q654

? KQJ5

? AKQ1075

? 1087

• J872

? None

Partner passed as North, East opened 1 Heart and South bid 2 Spades as a weak jump overcall — West passed and partner raised to 3 spades and South elected to pass — He had a good spade suit but the rest of it was pretty crummy, especially the three small hearts.

He was glad he did when he saw dummy and those wasted Club values.

West led the heart 9 and East won the jack and continued with the King and Ace which West ruffed with the 8 and declarer overuffed with dummy’s Jack — this effectively killed dummy for declarer.

South drew trumps and noted with interest that East followed to three rounds.

Now he could afford to lose two diamonds, but no more. It seemed probable based on the play that the diamond honours were split and if that were the case declarer could make it if he could figure out who had two diamonds and who had three.

Based on West having 6 hearts and 3 spades he decided to play him for the doubleton and … played the diamond jack from his hand

The full hand:

? J64

?Q4

• Q654

? KQJ5

? 9 ? 832

? 95 ? AKJ653

• A93 • K10

? 10987632 ? A4

? AKQ1075

? 1087

• J872

?None

Once declarer played the diamond jack West was stumped — if he ducked East wins the king but then declarer can later lead towards the queen, so he won and played a club.

Declarer ruffed and led a diamond and when West played low he also played a low one from dummy. East was forced to win and the contract makes! Extremely well thought out declarer play.