Many congratulations to the team of John Burville, Molly Taussig, Charles Hall and Stephanie Kyme for scoring an emphatic win in the Bermuda Open Teams Championship held at the Bridge Club last Saturday.

This was a really strong field containing all but a handful of the top local players and the winners did it in style with an impressive five wins out of five.

Each match was played on a 20-victory-point scale and the winners had a total of 72 VPs out of 100 — an impressive total. In second place with 59 were Margie Way, Misha Novakovic, Linda Pollett and Elizabeth McKee, and in third were Rachael Gosling, John Glynn, Gertie Barker and Jane Smith. I think these three teams would have led the betting going into the event.

The four winners have all had numerous successes at the club, as have the teams immediately behind them — it would have taken a brave person to try and pick a favourite at the outset as choosing between the top teams would have been difficult. This was a deep field and it is great to see such a strong participation.

The scoring was remarkable in one aspect — the biggest win was 17-3 meaning there was not one 20-0 blowout, something I’ve never seen before.

Teams bridge is the purest form of competition, and the odds of an upset are way less than in Pairs, but for each of the teams to pick up some victory points in every match they played against some strong opponents is not only remarkable but speaks well for the two teams in the field who were demonstrably less experienced than the others.

So big congrats to John, Molly, Charles and Steph — they are all accomplished players, but it also takes a lot of concentration and discipline to not let the quality drop in even one match. What also struck me when looking at the 24-player field was how much this entire group has contributed to the running of the club over the years — exceptional!

Today’s hand (see Figure 1) is, in a way, an optical illusion, in that the contract looks destined to go down by one trick, but when one actually plays the hand to its fullest, a strange situation arises and things turn out quite differently.

South opened a 13/15 NT and North had an easy raise to 3NT. On the four of hearts lead, four players made their contract and three went down. It appears that when declarer loses the lead, the defence will take four heart winners and the ace of spades. But will they? One of the world’s greatest players, Terence Reese, provided a tip that if you are a trick short, run your suit of winners and see what is discarded — so let’s see what happens if you do that!

You win the ten of hearts and take five club winners. West must keep three diamonds and four hearts, so discards one diamond and two spades. This is now the position in Figure 2.

You now exit with the King of hearts. West can cash four hearts, but now has to lead a diamond away from the Queen and declarer wraps up nine tricks!

To beat the contract, West must win the Ace of hearts and then lead the two to partners 87 so that East can cash the Ace of spades! Then East can play their fourth heart back to West, who takes the setting two tricks — tough defence to see!

Easy when you see all four hands but there are tons of ways the defence can go wrong:

• If West pitches a heart, there will not be enough tricks to beat the contract

• If West pitches a second diamond, declarer can cash three diamond tricks, with the Queen dropping

• If West cashes hearts from the top, she will have to lead away from the diamond Queen at trick 11

• If East pitches even one heart at any point, EW will not have the communications to cross to the East hand for the spade Ace, and then cross back to West. Declarer will eventually make a trick with the King-Jack of spades (the Queen has been discarded).

If any East-West pair can surmount all those obstacles and find the winning defence they should shout it from the rooftops on making such a fine play.

Congrats also to the declarers, who read the end position and made the right play — the hand came up in a top-class event, which is why some of them prevailed.

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

BRIDGE CLUB RESULTS

Friday, October 24

1 Sancia Garrison/Jane Smith

2 Tony Saunders/Margaret Way

3 Judy King/Martha Ferguson

Saturday, October 24

Open Teams Championship

1 John Burville/Molly Taussig/Charles Hall/Stephanie Kyme

2 Margaret Way/Miodrag Novakovic/Linda Pollett/Elizabeth McKee

3 Rachael Gosling/John F W Glynn/Gertrude Barker/Jane Smith

Monday, October 27

1 Jane Smith/Sancia Garrison

2 Charles Hall/Molly Taussig

3 Margaret Way/Rachael Gosling

Tuesday, October 28

1 Ben Stone/James Fielding

2 Vivian Pereira/Sharon Andrews

3 Ian Boatman/Muna Vallis

Wednesday, October 29

1 Gertrude Barker/Jane Smith

2 Tracy Nash/Desmond Nash

3 Lynanne Bolton/Heather Woolf