After yet another gripping final session of a Club tournament, Marge Way and Misha Novakovic held on the take the Bermuda Bridge Club Open Pairs Championship. In the Intermediate Championship, Tracy and Des Nash took the title.

After the first session last Saturday morning it looked like the title was Marge and Misha’s to lose – they had an excellent 64.24 per cent game which left them some 8 per cent ahead of Magda Farag and Sheena Rayner in second with a clutch of pairs lined up just behind second place.

Closing out a tournament, however, is never easy and so it proved – Marge and Misha had a decent 54.63 per cent in the second session which left them a wafer-thin one matchpoint ahead of Molly Taussig and Stephanie Kyme, who had a storming 67.86 per cent second session to just come up short.

Just a matchpoint and a half behind them were Gertie Barker and Jane Smith who also put together an excellent 63.89 per cent game in the second session.

In the Intermediate section, Des and Tracy finished the first session just ahead of Sharon Shanahan and Claude Guay and managed to maintain their lead over this pair to win by less than a board.

Huge congratulations to the winners and the placing pairs – this was a strong field and it would have been a tough call to decide which pairs were favourites at the outset.

What is truly remarkable is that Margie has been in the mix at the top level for over six decades! To retain one’s skill, and stamina, at her age is just a massive achievement — she also leads the masterpoint race at the club for the first quarter of 2024 and to top it all off brought a vat of her homemade pea soup for all to enjoy!

In Misha, she also had a partner with tons of talent and experience which he developed right here in Bermuda, and they have both been in the winners’ circle many times before.

In the Intermediates Tracy and Des, together with second-placed Claude and Sharon, would have been the pairs one expected to be in the final mix, and so it proved. They are making good progress into the Open ranks.

Expert and advanced players train themselves not only to concentrate on the honour cards in the game, but also to take note of the lower cards and use it to their advantage. Declarer on today’s hand (see Figure 1) was not only good enough to spot the safety play on the hand but then executed his strategy to perfection.

After South opened a standard 20-21 point, two notrump, North saw little point in looking for a diamond slam and so made the easy raise to the notrump slam.

West led the ten of spades. Declarer counted nine top tricks and so needed three extra tricks from the red suits. The first thought was to cash the Ace of diamonds. However, declarer realised that would be a fatal move if the diamonds were 0=4, as there would be no way then to make four tricks in the suit.

Declarer then had an inspired thought: he led a low heart to dummy’s Jack. When the Jack of hearts won, declarer saw that as he now had ten tricks available he could afford a safety play in diamonds.

The only danger was that East had all the missing diamonds (if West had them the Jack is sitting behind the Queen) and he spotted a way to cater for that.

At trick three, he led the two of diamonds intending to cover the four with his seven. He did not mind losing the trick to West, since the suit would then break at worst 3-1, producing four tricks.

At the table, East played the nine of diamonds and declarer won the trick with the King, West showing out. Declarer continued with a low diamond to the Jack and Queen. Declarer’s King-seven was now a tenace over East’s ten-four and he could pick up the remaining diamond tricks with a finesse.

You should note that if the Jack of hearts had been taken by the King at trick two, then declarer would need five diamond tricks. South would then play the Ace and King of diamonds, hoping to drop the Queen. So, how declarer played the diamonds depended on the location of the King of hearts.

Beautifully thought out and wonderfully executed!

• David Ezekiel can be reached on davidezekiel999@gmail.com

BRIDGE CLUB RESULTS

Friday, March 28

1 Sancia Garrison/Jane Smith

2 Betsy Baillie/Caroline Svenson

3 Miodrag Novakovic/Margaret Way

Saturday, March 29

Open Pairs Championship

1 Margaret Way/Miodrag Novakovic

2 Molly Taussig/Stephanie Kyme

3 Gertrude Barker/Jane Smith

Intermediate Pairs Championship

Tracy Nash/Desmond Nash

Monday, March 31

North/South

1 Charlie Anderegg/Lorraine Pellegrini

2 Rachael Gosling/Margaret Way

3 Peter Donnellan/Lynanne Bolton

East/West

1 Caroline Svenson/Jane Clipper

2 Judith Bussell/Diana Diel

3 Gertrude Barker/Jane Smith

Tuesday, April 1

North/South

1 Ben Stone/James Fielding

2 Tracey Pitt/Desiree Wood

3 Heidi Dyson/Keri McKittrick

East/West

1 Malcolm Moseley/Ian Boatman

2 James Mulderig/Robert Mulderig

3 Veronica Boyce/Carol Eastham

Wednesday, April 2

North/South

1 Gertrude Barker/Jane Smith

2 Desmond Nash/Tracy Nash

East/West

1 Martha Ferguson/Judy King

2 Sheena Rayner/Molly Taussig

Thursday, April 3

1 John F W Glynn/Rachael Gosling

2= Betsy Baillie/Lisa Ferrari

2= Erika Jones/Caitlin Conyers