Tournament season kicks off at the Bridge Club with the Non Life-Master Pairs being held today – it is a two-session event and the first session is at 9.30am. Also a reminder that the newly formatted Senior/Junior game will be held on Thursday – the seniors will play as pairs, as will the juniors, and hopefully there will be a lot for the juniors to learn from the experience. Full results on these events next week.

Today’s hand is not just instructional, but hugely enlightening. What it displays is that even those who believe they are competent at declarer play sometimes don’t shift their thinking enough based on what has gone before. This hand (see Figure 1) came up in a pairs game and a remarkable nine out of ten declarers went one down in the spade slam.

At most tables South opened one spade and when North bid either three spades or four spades, South had an easy raise to six spades with that powerful hand. My preference for the North hand is to bid four spades – when I have four-card support and no real way to find out which of my cards are working I tend to take the aggressive route.

West led the King of clubs and the nine unsuccessful declarers split into two camps. The first group of four displayed no evidence that they knew what they were doing – they won the club, drew two trumps, played King-Ace and a diamond ruff and then took the heart finesse – when this lost and a heart was returned declarer had to go one down. Pretty pedestrian.

The second group of five pairs showed a little more expertise – they saw that a successful diamond finesse would allow a heart discard from dummy and would guarantee 12 tricks, the heart finesse possibly providing a thirteenth trick. When both finesses failed, this group also went down, albeit with a bit more honour!

Then we come to our hero, declarer No 10! He could also see the diamond/heart finesses giving a 75 per cent chance of success, but he spotted that the opening lead gave him an even better chance of making the hand.

He won the club, ruffed a club, crossed to the spade Queen and ruffed another club. He now drew the last trump and played King-Ace and ruffed a diamond to reach this position (see Figure 2).

He now administered the coup-de-grace by playing the club Jack and discarding a heart – West was in but was end-played – he either had to lead a heart into the Ace-Queen or lead a diamond, allowing declarer a ruff and discard, ruffing in dummy and discarding the Queen of hearts from hand – slam made!

Just beautiful awareness and analysis – given that West almost certainly has the club Queen, the play was certain to succeed. None of the other declarers appreciated the importance of the club Jack in dummy – bravo to Declarer No 10!

• David Ezekiel can be contacted at davidezekiel999@gmail.com

BRIDGE CLUB RESULTS

Friday, February 21

North/South

1 Tony Saunders/Patricia Siddle

2 Sancia Garrison/Richard Hall

3 Louise Rodger/Magda Farag

East/West

1 John Rayner/Charles Hall

2 Margaret Way/Jane Smith

3 Wenda Krupp/Jane Gregory

Monday, February 24

North/South

1 Geoff Bell/Kathleen Bell

2 Sheena Rayner/Magda Farag

3 Jack Rhind/Charles Hall

East/West

1 Sancia Garrison/Margaret Way

2 Peter Donnellan/Lynanne Bolton

3 Patricia Siddle/Diana Diel

Tuesday, February 25

North/South

1. Chris Van Rooyen/Richard Bruton

2. Tracey Pitt/Desiree Woods

East/West

1 Jean Schilling/Catherine Kennedy

2 Richard Neame/Louise Neame

Wednesday, February 26

1 Peter Donnellan/Lynanne Bolton

2 Stephanie Kyme/Molly Taussig

3 Sheena Rayner/Magda Farag

Thursday, February 27

1 Delton Outerbridge/Betsy Baillie

2 Miodrag Novakovic/Margaret Way

3 Stephanie Kyme/Charles Hall

Granaway Bridge Club

Wednesday, February 26

North/South

1. James Mulderig/Robert Mulderig

2 Lynanne Bolton/Peter Donnellan

3 Martha Ferguson/Stephan Cosham

East/West

1 Stephanie Kyme/Diana Diel

2 Betsy Baillie/Delton Outerbridge

3 Claude Guay/Sharon Shanahan