Today sees both sessions of the Bermuda Bridge Club Open Teams Championship being played at the club — the first session starts at 9.30am and then after a brief break for refreshments the event concludes in the afternoon.

Hopefully, we will have a good turnout and a competitive day of bridge — full results in next week's column.

I’ve written often in this column that one of the keys to successful declarer play is getting your opponents to help you make your contract — that often means having to give them the lead at an opportune time while you still control the hand.

Players are usually loath to give the defenders tricks, but when you have unavoidable losers, using them at the right time can be the route to success. See the hand in Figure 1.

East opened One heart, South bid a spade, and West made a pre-emptive jump to three hearts — this robbed North of space to show his strength and spade support below game.

Since slam was very unlikely, he bid the spade game and hoped that his partner would have a play for ten tricks. East-West wisely judged that their semi-balanced hands did not bode well for a five hearts sacrifice, and in fact that would have gone three down on routine defence.

West led the Jack of hearts, which held, and shifted to a trump. Declarer won with the King and drew the remaining trumps.

He saw that unless diamonds produced four tricks, he had three possible losers in the minors. The only other chance was that the hand with three diamonds to the Queen also held at most two clubs.

Accordingly, declarer led a low club from hand and played low from dummy, West’s ten winning the trick and West exited with a diamond.

Declarer was now in control — he won with dummy’s King and then cashed both minor-suit Aces — although the diamonds divided 3-2, the Queen did not fall.

See Figure 2 for the position now.

Declarer’s luck changed for the better when he exited with a diamond — East won with the Queen but had no clubs left to play and since had only hearts remaining, he had to play one.

Declarer threw his remaining losing club from hand and won the trick by ruffing in dummy. That gave him ten tricks: five trumps, a heart ruff, and four tricks in the minors. Contract made!

Notice the key play where declarer gave up the club trick early in order to set the scene for the endplay, where East had to provide a ruff and discard.

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

BRIDGE CLUB RESULTS

Friday, October 17

1 Stephanie Kyme/Diana Diel

2 Elysa Burland/Heather Woolf

3 Richard Gray/Wendy Gray

Monday, October 20

North/South

1 Tony Saunders/Charles Hall

2 Allyson Eadie/Aida Bostelmann

3 Richard Gray/Wendy Gray

East/West

1 Linda Pollett/Elizabeth McKee

2 Lisa Ferrari/Sharon Shanahan

3 Gertrude Barker/Sheena Rayner

Tuesday, October 21

1 Colin James/Anna White

2 Ben Stone/James Fielding

3 Veronica Boyce/Carol Eastham

Wednesday, October 22

North/South

1 Charles Hall/Margaret Way

2 Richard Gray/Wendy Gray

East/West

1 Martha Ferguson/Judy King

2 Gertrude Barker/Jane Smith

Thursday, October 23

1 Gertrude Barker/Caitlin Conyers

2 Miodrag Novakovic/Margaret Way

3 Lisa Ferrari/Sharon Shanahan