The guest columnist this week is Alan Douglas. Alan has been playing bridge for more than 40 years, and has represented Bermuda in International competition more than 20 times. He won the Caribbean and Central American Championships in 2003, and also has numerous regional and sectional wins to his credit.Summertime in Bermuda the numbers at the Bridge Club tend to drop and this year is no exception. There are no championship events scheduled for the near future and many members are away on extended holidays.Last Monday night I played at the club and there were several very interesting hands.I invite you to come and play a few hands with me and see if we see things the same way.On all of the following deals you are sitting east.Board 22. Your hand is: 7642 AJ75 void 105432. Partner opens one club and North bids 2 clubs. What do you bid?Board 23. Your hand is: AKQJ8 7 Q86543 J. Partner opens one diamond North passes. What do you bid?Board 27. Your hand is: 4 AKQ82 A7 AKJ109. North opens 2 spades. What do you bid?Okay, back to Board 22. I decided to bid a gentle 3 clubs and see how the bidding progresses. South on my left bid 3 spades and all passed back to me. Normally the 2 club cue-bid by North promises both majors at least 5/5. If North has 5 spades and I have 4 and South bid spades, my partner surely has one or less spades.So now having worked out the spade situation, I bid 5 clubs which was doubled on my left. All passed. Good I say, I have the opposition where I want them.North leads the ace of spades and all follow. A second spade went to South’s Q and surprise, surprise, my partner played a second spade. At this stage I left the table to head for the bar to get something for my ensuing headache. I thought as I left the table — was North’s 2 clubs really for the majors or in the worst case scenario was it just a club suit.When I got back to the table I asked how many did we go down. Partner said no problem we made 5.The whole hand was:NorthAJ10586432K758West East98 7642KQ AJ75A862 voidAKJ76 105432SouthKQ3109QJ10943Q9.5 clubs doubled making!On Board 23. I thought, what do I need to know about partner’s hand? If partner has three key cards (3 aces or 2 aces and the K of trumps) we should be safe for 6 diamonds, 4 key cards and I will bid 7, 2 key cards (I hope the trump K drops) otherwise we will play 5 diamonds. This way was much easier I thought than introducing the spade suit and then trying to work out what to do.Partner had 3 aces and I bid the small slam in diamonds but we could not pick up the king of diamonds so we made 6 only.Lastly to Board 27. My partner and I have a convention marked on our card that says Leaping Michaels, which is meant to be used over an opponent’s weak 2 major opening bid to show a game going hand that is at least 5/5 with the other major and a minor. So my bid on this hand should be 4 clubs, which shows clubs and hearts. But I had never used this convention with current partner and was afraid that 4 clubs might be construed as clubs only, and get passed out. So I chickened out and cue bid the opponents spade suit and we got to play in 4 hearts, making.Partner did say that she may have missed the Leaping Michaels bid.