Bridge is coming to BHS! Hot on the heels of the successful launch of Youth Bridge at Saltus, the head of school at BHS has agreed to launch a bridge initiative at BHS in conjunction with the Bermuda Bridge Club.

The programme will kick off with an assembly presentation, and then start lunchtimes in November, following with an extracurricular afternoon in January.

Any student can sign up, and will have an opportunity of representing Bermuda at a bridge event in the future. Elizabeth Mckee will lead the programme on behalf of the Bridge Club with help from Linda Pollett.

Elizabeth and Linda may need extra help depending upon the number and ages of the students involved so if any reader here wants to get involved contact Elizabeth via the Bridge Club.

If you are a BHS student (or a parent!) I would urge you to get involved with the initiative as it will undoubtedly provide great benefits. Bridge is an amazing and challenging game and a recent article in the New York Times, part of which is reproduced below, said it well:

“Bridge is played all over the world, and there are millions of people that play Bridge occasionally, and about one million players that play frequently. Bridge should be popular.

“It’s an elegant game, full of strategy and tactics.

“It’s part science, part maths, part logic, part reason.

“But a huge component of bridge is also very human. This melding of the former with the latter is what sets bridge apart, not only from other card games, but also from board games like chess.

“While computers can now routinely beat all but a handful of chess grandmasters, they can’t come close to outplaying the world’s finest bridge players. Why is this? Because computers can understand maths, but they can’t understand people — at least not yet.”

So there you are — a ringing endorsement which I fully support.

Back to the club and the new season. The Open Pairs first session was held on Monday with the second session taking place last night and when I went into the website to get the halfway standings I was shocked to see that there was a three-table field — six pairs!

This is a far cry from where things used to be and clearly there is a lot of thinking that needs to be done at the club to address this situation.

Much has changed over the last few years at the club and clearly what worked in the past is no longer working.

There is a diminishing number of good senior players at the club and most of the activity is taking place at the junior level and the juniors, understandably, prefer to play among their peers rather than get beaten up at the table by the more advanced players. The growth in the junior games is really healthy for the long term future of the club but managing this transition period is going to be a challenge.

Add to that the huge swing away from evening games to the morning/afternoon games and the fact that the scheduling of the Open in September, which I think is earlier than usual, means a few people have still not returned after the summer and the impact is clear.

I have a feeling that the time is not far away when some club championships may actually have to be scheduled in the afternoons. I am sure that the Committee has its finger on the pulse on all of this and it will be interesting to see what changes are proposed to address this going forward.

The results of the first session were predictably tight given that top on a board was 2!

John Burville and David Cordon lead with 61 per cent followed by David Sykes - Charles Hall on 59 per cent, Alan Douglas - Magda Farag on 58% per cent and Diana Diel - Lyn O’Neill on 50 per cent and really any one of these pairs can take the title — full results next week.

Successful declarer play in bridge comes from a lot of different places — good technique, experience, listening to the bidding and then backing your judgment in the play.

Quite often a key play has to be made based on a probable instead of a certain lie of the cards, but as long as you play with the odds you will be a winner in the long run. You cannot be 100 per cent right all the time but as long as your batting average is well above 50 per cent success will come.

This hand came in a tough game between four reigning or past World Champions ... Chip Martel was South partnering Michael Rosenberg with Jeff Meckstroth and Zia Mahmood sitting East West.

North

S A103

H 43

D A8532

C A106

East

S J

H AQ985

D KQ1064

C 53

South

S Q8754

H K2

D J7

C 87

The bidding was fairly interesting:

West North East South

Pass 1D 1H 1S

3 H Pass 4H Pass

Pass 4S

West led the Diamond 9 and Martel took stock. West had not led partner’s suit, so the lead was almost certainly a singleton leaving Zia with 5 Diamonds and at least 5 Hearts.

Given that West had jumped to 3 Hearts with not many points he probably had 4 Hearts, leaving Zia with 5 and almost certainly a 1-5-5-2 or 0-5-5-3 shape, and Chip decided to base his whole line of play on that.

He won the Diamond Ace, came to the King of Clubs and played the Spade Queen which Hamman did not cover as he had 4 Spades. When Zia’s Jack showed up Martel led a Spade to the 10, cashed the Spade Ace and led a Heart.

Zia hopped up with the Ace and cashed the King of Diamonds and played the Queen in this position:

North

S

H4

D853

CA10

East

S

HQ9

DQ106

C3

South

S87

HK

D

CQ87

West

SK

HJ10

D

CJ94

Martel ruffed this and Hamman threw a heart … the club play was now crucial but Martel stuck with his plan.

Knowing that Zia had at most one club left and Hamman had three, the Jack rated to be with Hamman.

He therefore played a club to the ten and now the contract rolled home — a really great piece of card reading to play the two black suits for just one loser.

This is how the minds of the champions work, but if you take a look at the analysis it might take some work, but is not out of reach.