Not a lot happening at the Club right now … the Bridge Club AGM was held on Monday, between the two Monday games, and from all accounts was pretty positive and non-controversial, always a good thing!

Judy King continues in her position as President, a real positive as she has shown a real energy, passion and talent for the post and I hear that John Burville was voted in as Vice President, another good move as he will bring some out-of-the-box thinking to the Club.

Upcoming events are the Curry and Quiz night on March 29th, Mixed Pairs on April 2nd and 4th and Cue Bid Workshop on April 9th.

This week’s hand is hugely instructional and highlights the art of the ‘loser-on-loser’ play which presents itself way more often than you would think.

Dealer East E/W Vulnerable

????????????????????????????????? A1053

? J5

• A9873

? 93

? 7 ? None

? AK92 ? 1087643

• 10542 • KJ

? AJ64 ? Q10875

? KQJ98642

? Q

• Q6

? K2

The Bidding:

West North East South

Pass????4?

Pass Pass Pass

East’s initial pass, the vulnerability, South’s pre-emptive opening bid and West’s reticence conspired to keep East-West out of the auction, where 12 tricks, albeit rather fortunately, are available in hearts.

West led the king of hearts and shifted to the two of diamonds. As the cards lay, playing low from dummy would have been fatal: East would win the trick with the king of diamonds and shift to a club, giving the defenders four tricks before declarer gained the lead.

Instead of playing low at trick two, declarer called for dummy’s ace of diamonds and led dummy’s jack of hearts at trick three, throwing the queen of diamonds from hand!

This loser-on-loser play gave declarer a real chance of establishing a long card in diamonds without letting East gain the lead. West won that trick with the ace of hearts and shifted to his seven of trumps.

Declarer took this with dummy’s ten and followed with the six from hand. After ruffing a diamond high, declarer led the two of trumps to dummy’s three to trumps to dummy’s five to ruff a third diamond, thereby establishing dummy’s last diamond as a winner.

All that remained for declarer to do was to cross to dummy with the ace of trumps and discard a club on the good diamond.

If the diamonds had broken 5-1, unlikely as that was, declarer would have had to hope that the ace of clubs was onside.

What declarer did, however, was what all good players do — investigate every possible way of making the hand before falling back on what appears to be the only obvious action — it’s amazing how many hands provide those declarer play options. A really well played hand!