Today sees the staging of the Bermuda Bridge Club Open Pairs Championship at the club — it will be a two-session event and will hopefully attract a good-quality field — full results next week.

Following hot on the heels of that event will be the Junior Pairs Championship — again a two-session event, but spread over two Tuesdays, March 17 and 24, at 7pm.

Here are the details put out by chief tournament director Peter Donnellan:

All members with less than 100 master points are eligible to enter, including our newer players.

It is planned as a two-session event — so you need to be able to play on both evenings.

You have to sign up with your partner to take part — the sign-up sheet is on the Notice Board. There will not be a regular Junior game on those weeks.

Tuesday players who are not entering the championship are welcome to attend Steve Cosham’s novice development session in the Moran Room.

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Now to this week’s hand! Bridge, as I’ve noted here a hundred times, is a complicated game and if you want to succeed at it you have to take on at least some of those complications.

One of those is noticing the “spot cards” — those cards that are lower than a ten. It’s not easy, but if you train yourself to make note of them during the play of the hand you will benefit on many occasions.

With that as an introduction, see if it helps you sort out the best play on this week’s hand (see Figure 1)!

North opened one club, South bid one heart and when North rebid his clubs, South made the obvious and practical bid of 3NT — West led the spade Queen.

After winning the spade lead in hand with his King, declarer counted seven top tricks and saw that one plan for the extra tricks was to cash the Queen of clubs, then cross to dummy and continue with dummy’s two club winners, hoping that the opposing clubs are 3-3.

Declarer, however, realised that tackling the clubs in this manner would let him make the contract only when clubs behaved — on the above layout they don’t — and using this approach would see declarer have to concede down two.

At the table, declarer (an expert) after a lot of thought saw there was a slightly, but meaningfully, better plan.

First, he overtook the Queen of clubs with dummy's Ace, then he continued with King and nine of clubs. Obviously, the contract would still make when the clubs were 3-3.

The extra chance was that it would also make the contract when one of the defenders began with J10, J8 or 108 of clubs. Declarer’s luck was in when the J8 was doubleton with East as now there was only one club out higher than the 9-7.

Declarer scored five club tricks and four top winners in the other suits. The chance of a 4-2 club break is roughly 48 per cent and the 3-3 break is only about 33 per cent.

Declarer knew that there are 15 possible doubletons in clubs (yes, it gets complicated now but don’t switch off!) and by choosing to play this way he would succeed when either defender held one of the three specific doubletons.

So, this added almost 10 per cent to declarer’s chance of making the contract, raising it from around 36 per cent on a 3-3 break to around 45 per cent.

A lot of science there for you to absorb, but if you look at this for a second and a third (and maybe fourth!) time, it will help you absorb the importance of the non-honour cards.

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

BRIDGE CLUB RESULTS

Friday, March 6

North/South

1 Peter Donnellan/Gertrude Barker

2 Jane Smith/Margaret Way

3 Louise Rodger/Magda Farag

East/West

1 Stephanie Kyme/Diana Diel

2 Elizabeth McKee/Rachael Gosling

3 Elysa Burland/Heather Woolf

Monday, March 9

North/South

1 Charles Hall/Jane Davies

2 Jane Smith/Sancia Garrison

3 Sheena Rayner/Magda Farag

East/West

1 Patricia Siddle/Diana Diel

2 Lorna Anderson/Heather Woolf

3 Elysa Burland/Molly Taussig

Tuesday, March 10

North/South

1 Jean Schilling/Heidi Dyson

2 Barbara Harrington/Eldon Lewis

East/West

1 Julia Tadman/Joshimar Hussey

2 Tracy Pitt/David Leach

Wednesday, March 11

1 Charles Hall/Margaret Way

2 Tracy Nash/Desmond Nash

3 Gertrude Barker/Jane Smith

Thursday, March 12

1 Charles Hall/Stephanie Kyme

2 William Pollett/Linda Pollett

3= Tim Mardon/Delton Outerbridge

3= Betsy Baillie/Lisa Ferrari