still have the Player of the Year results to bring to you and once I get hold of the detailed listings they will be in the column, maybe even in the Christmas column.

Last Thursday saw the annual Ernie Owen Individual tournament take place at the club and the event attracted a huge turnout of 52 players, including some of the top players. The results, however, were different than expected with a number of newer players at the top.

Winning the event was Diana Kempe, closely followed by Susan Adhemar in second and David Pickering in third. Sheena Rayner was in fourth and George Correia finished fifth.

The next five positions were occupied by Judith Law, Charles Hall, David Sykes, Judy King and Jane Smith.

A big well done Diana and to the top three — this, combined with the excellent team result last week of the Davidson team, shows that the intermediate/junior group is putting in the work to improve and it is showing in the results.

The event was played with a single system, Standard American, and was duplicate pairs. This is a game where more points are won in the part score jungle and with overtricks than are won with fancy bidding systems and magic slams.

Today’s hand is the sort of bread-and-butter bidding and play hand where events are won or lost.

Dealer North

East/West Vulnerable

North

SQ10976

HAK7

D84

CJ62

West East

S32 SJ

HJ1095 HQ7432

DAJ62 DK753

CA108 CK74

South

SAK854

H6

DQ109

CQ953

The Bidding

North East South West

Pass Pass 1S Pass

3D* Pass 3S Pass

* Limit raise in Spades

The South hand is just about an opening bid in third seat and even with the singleton declarer had no hesitation in not accepting the game try by partner.

West led the Jack of Hearts — plan your play.

Ready? A few things to think about — there are two unavoidable Diamond losers and the Club suit will need some fortunate lie of the cards to restrict yourself to two losers, which you can’t on this hand if you play Clubs yourself — unless you can force the opponents to open up the suit.

So that is the plan and it now becomes relatively easy.

Win the Heart, draw two rounds of trumps ending in dummy, cash the second Heart throwing a Diamond and ruff the third heart and this is what you have.

Now simply exit with one of your losing Diamonds — your opponents are stuck.

They can win and cash another Diamond but then have to either open up the Clubs where they can take two tricks or lead a red card giving you a ruff and discard.

Either way — nine tricks and probably a clear top in a pairs game.

Take another good look at this hand — there is a ton to learn from it.

North

S1097

H

D84

CJ62

West East

S S

H10 HQ7

DAJ62 DK75

CA108 CK74

South

SK8

H

DQ10

CQ953