Many, many congratulations to the team of Lorna Anderson, Diana Diel, Heather Woolf and Pat Siddle, who won the Bermuda Bridge Club Open Teams Championship in a dramatic finish in the last session.

Finishing a really creditable second were the lowest-ranked team in the event - Tracey Pitt, David Leach, Joshimar Hussey and Julia Tadman. They finished ahead of the early leaders, Molly Taussig, John Burville, Linda Pollett and Bill Pollett.

Things did not start well for the eventual winners who were blanked 20-0 in their first of five matches by the Pitt team, and after three rounds the Taussig team looked in total control, with a total of 52 points, the Pitt team in second with 38, and Anderson in third with 34.

The fourth round, however, turned the event on its head when the Pitt team scored a 14-6 victory against the leaders and Anderson picked up another 18 vps to leave the scores going into the last round Taussig 60, Anderson 52 and Pitt 52 which meant that any one of these teams could win it.

The Anderson team now met the leaders in the last match and needed a win of at least 15-5 in their last match and also needed the Pitt team to scores less than them — nail-biting stuff!

It all turned out that way! Anderson won 18-2 and Pitt fought to a tough 12-8 win which gave them second place! This is a great win, as neither Heather, nor Lorna, who are both Life Masters, had previously recorded a win in Open competition at the club and it is just reward for two players who are dedicated to the game and never stop wanting to improve.

Lorna is also special to me, as her sister Jacqui was my first employee at IAS in 1981, so I have known the girls for a long time and this feels like a family affair! Hugely deserving for Heather and Lorna.

Pat and Diana are both high level Life Masters and regular winners at the top level — both have had many wins at the Club and Regional level and Diana has been a regular visitor to the winners circle in the last few years- she has a great temperament for the game, competitive but calm, and as good as she is still searches for ways to avoid repeating a bad result.

Pat has also been winning for years and is steady, thoughtful and solid in both the bidding and play, and that is a great combination at this game.

All in all a very popular win for Lorna, Pat, Heather and Diana, but I can’t end without once again commending the Pitt team of Tracey, David, Joshimar and Julia, whose names crop up often in the intermediate level, but this is something else.

To beat all the three top-rated teams and take 49 out of 60 points from them is nothing short of remarkable, and I hope it gives them enough juice and confidence to keep swimming with the big fish!

Hot on the heels of the Teams the Bermuda Sectional kicked off yesterday with an Open Pairs event and will continue over the weekend and through next Tuesday with the closing 99er Pairs. Full results in the column of October 24.

A key component of declarer play is trying to construct the opponent’s hand based on the bidding, or lack of it!

Today’s hand is a fairly straightforward exercise in figuring out what you need to make your contract, and then making the play to take advantage of it.

South’s two-club bid was New Minor Forcing asking partner if she had three spades — partner’s three-spade bid confirmed that she did. And South then made the unimaginably bad bid of four spades with nine points opposite a 13/14 point hand, as partner had not opened 1NT.

The bizarre thing is that the distribution actually gave declarer a chance to make the hand.

West started by leading the Ace, King, Queen of hearts and South ruffed the third round and took stock — he had to lose at least one diamond, so he needed to find a way to not lose another.

And there was a way to do that if one of the opponents held exactly Ax of diamonds and if declarer could figure out whether that was East or West.

He now cast his mind back to the bidding — West had passed throughout but had shown up with nine points in hearts — ergo, he cannot have the diamond Ace!

So declarer had to hope East had the Ax - with this in mind he drew three rounds of trumps ending in dummy and led a low diamond to his King, which held.

He now played another diamond and when West played the ten, declarer closed his eyes and played low from dummy... bingo!

East had to win the Ace and the contract made — declarer had made up for his horrible bidding with some really good play!

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

BRIDGE CLUB RESULTS

Friday, October 9

North/South

1 Betsy Baillie/Heather Woolf

2 Louise Rodger/Patricia Siddle

East/West

1 Aida Bostelmann/Wenda Krupp

2 Tony Saunders/Molly Taussig

Saturday, October 10

Open Teams Championship

1 Lorna Anderson/Heather Woolf/Pat Siddle/Diana Diel

2 Tracy Pitt/David Leach/Joshimer Hussey/Julia Tadman

Monday, October 12

1 Peter Donnellan/Lynanne Bolton

2 Sancia Garrison/Caroline Svensen

3 Richard Gray/Wendy Gray

Tuesday, October 13

1 Joshimar Hussey/Julia Tadman

2 Ross Cooper/Jean Schilling

3 Sally Irvine/Sandra Ogden

Wednesday, October 14

1 William Pollett/Linda Pollett

2 Elizabeth McKee/Stephanie Kyme

3 Lynanne Bolton/Heather Woolf

Thursday, October 15

1= Gertrude Barker/John F W Glynn

1= Claude Guay/Sharon Shanahan

1= Lisa Ferrari/Margaret Way