Well the big day is finally here! Tonight sees the start of the 2026 Bermuda Regional and co-chairs Lisa Rhind and Steve Cosham will be marshalling their troops to provide yet another memorable experience for our visitors and locals.

The event takes a ton of organising before and during the actual week and the committee deserves recognition for all the hard work — the committee members are Judy King, Sharon Shanahan, Tracy Nash, Stephanie Kyme, Betsy Baillie, Judy Bussell, John Glynn, and Lisa Ferrari.

When the event returned in 2024 the support from the Bermuda Tourism Authority was crucial and that support continues — the Regional brings hundreds of visitors to the island during one of the slowest months of the year, benefiting not only the hotel but restaurants, taxis and the retail stores in Hamilton and throughout the island.

Other invaluable sponsors include BermudAir, Goslings, Hamilton Princess, Lindo’s, Bermuda General Agency and Butterfield and Vallis.

Alongside the play during the week, the organisers put on a number of panel shows — bridge professional and teacher Robert Todd is heavily involved in putting these together.

I’ll be running one of these on Wednesday lunchtime and hope to have two world-class players and teachers, Gail Greenberg and Jeff Hand, on the podium.

This week’s hand (see Figure 1) is just a superb illustration of a declarer who saw the danger of making a “reflex” play, looked ahead, and was successful, whereas his opponent in the other room failed in the same contract.

This deal came up in a team game and both West players noted the unfavourable vulnerability and were content with a pre-emptive jump to two spades, rather than risk being doubled at the three level. Both North players bid the game in hearts, not no-trump — a good decision, as 3NT by North fails on the obvious lead of a high diamond.

At the first table, West led the King of spades. This declarer was one of those players who is more known for speed of play rather than any deep thinking, and as soon as dummy went down he called for dummy’s Ace of spades.

East ruffed and shifted to the King of diamonds. All declarer could do now was to concede another trick in all three side suits for down one.

At the second table, declarer received the same lead, but unlike the rush to play at the first table, this declarer paused to make a plan.

After counting ten tricks (a spade, six trumps, a diamond and two clubs), declarer turned his mind to what could go wrong.

As West had not led a minor suit, he judged that the chance of a defensive ruff was small. So, the main danger was that West had started with seven spades. With this in mind declarer called for a low spade from dummy at trick one!

See the full hand in Figure 2.

After East discarded a diamond, declarer allowed himself a metaphorical pat on the back for withholding the Ace of spades instead of playing it.

West continued with the Queen of spades, which was also allowed to hold. After ruffing the third round of spades, declarer drew trumps in three rounds with the Ace, King and Queen.

Next, he played a club to dummy’s Jack. East won the Ace and exited with the King of diamonds to dummy’s Ace.

Declarer now claimed the rest for his contract as his losing diamond went away on the carefully preserved Ace of spades — lovely planning and well rewarded!

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

BRIDGE CLUB RESULTS

Friday, January 23

1 Charles Hall/Molly Taussig

2= Diana Diel/Stephanie Kyme

2= Louise Rodger/Magda Farag

Monday, January 26

North/South

1 William Pollett/Linda Pollett

2 Gertrude Barker/Magda Farag

3 Jane Smith/Sancia Garrison

East/West

1 Bill Souster/Sheena Rayner

2 Wendy Gray/Richard Gray

3 Elaine Stevens/Rosemary Smith

Tuesday, January 27

North/South

1 Tracy Pitt/David Leach

2 Felicity Lund/Linda Manders

East/West

1 Veronica Boyce/Carol Eastham

2 Vivian Pereira/Sharon Andrews

Wednesday, January 28

1 Rachael Gosling/Elizabeth McKee

2 Charles Hall/Margaret Way

3 Judith Bussell/Bill Souster

Thursday, January 29

1 Miodrag Novakovic/Margaret Way

2 Betsy Baillie/Delton Outerbridge

3 Gail Greenberg/Rachael Gosling