Well, what a week that was!

I have totally lost track as to what actually went on at the club between power outages, but what I can tell you is that the big winners last week were Fay (‘I promise I am a Tropical Storm’) and Gonzalo (‘I am a real hurricane’)!

This mixed pair battered all comers with an impressive display of strength, stamina and downright nastiness, so much so that I think there is a move afoot to ban them from the club — watch this space.

I believe, however, that all is now restored at the club and that all games are running as normal including the new Friday 12.30pm game.

The big event at the club last week was the Junior Open Teams, and three teams in the six team field created a storm of their own with a tremendously tight finish!

When the smoke had cleared the team of Kieran Powell, Richard Keane, Delton Outerbridge and Michael Antar, ended up winning by one IMP, with the third placed team a further two IMPs behind.

Finishing in an agonising second place were Peter Adhemar, Susan Adhemar, James Fraser and Marsha Fraser. The team of George Ogden, Sandra Ogden, Louise Payne and Marion Ezedinma finished in third.

Congratulations to the winners, and to the placing teams! The winners are all real newcomers to the game, relative to others in the field, so this win is really big — they won four out of their five matches, as did Ogden, with Adhemar winning three, and any championship win over two sessions is commendable.

Funnily enough, about a month ago, I stopped by the club and Delton offered how much he enjoyed the column and I said: “Well, I want to be writing about you.” So here it is. It is great to see such hot competition at this level, and hopefully many of these players will step up quickly to the Open ranks.

The Worldwide Instant Matchpoint game was also held last week, and the winners with 59% were Pat Siddle and Gill Gray, followed by Tony Saunders and Jean Johnson in second, and in third were Paul Thompson and Peter Donnellan. I believe the Ernie Owen Individual, which was scheduled for last week, will be rescheduled.

Now, let’s concentrate on Bridge, and this week’s hand is really a thing of beauty. Bridge declarer play is usually a mixture of experience and talent, but in this case it was mainly the latter as declarer, Bob Donkersloot from Holland, is just 19-years-old.

Dealer North N/S Vulnerable

S AJ74

H K5

D KQ654

C AK

S K2 S 53

H Q843 H AJ1097

D 9 D AJ

C 1076543 C J982

S Q10986

H 62

D 108732

C Q

The Bidding:

West North East South

1D Pass 1?S

Pass 4?C Pass 4?S???????

North’s 4 Club bid was announced as a ‘control showing slam try’ which Donkersloot was happy to refuse after he had scraped up a one spade response.

West led the 9 Diamond, clearly a singleton. East won the Queen with the Ace, and led the Jack back for West to ruff. Now the obvious Heart switch beat the hand.

But wait! The play did not go that way at Donkersloot’s table!

Seeing exactly how this would play out at trick one Donkersloot played low from dummy when the 9 was led! East won the Jack, and cashed the Ace, but the defence was now dead — declarer wins the club shift in dummy, pitches a Heart on the second Club and plays a Heart.

He can now get to hand with a Heart ruff in order to take the spade finesse — ten tricks.

Of course the defence can defeat the hand if they think a bit as to why declarer made the unusual play. West can ruff partners Ace of Diamonds, and play a Heart or, more difficult, at trick one East can figure it out, and refuse declarer’s Greek Gift by winning the Ace, and leading back the Jack for partner to ruff.

All very easy when looking at all four hands away from the table, but almost impossible in the heat of battle! None of this, however, takes away from the brilliance of the Dutchman’s play at trick one — keep an eye out for him.