THE Mixed Pairs Championship concluded at the Bridge Club on Monday night when Vera Petty and Roman Smolski justified their tag as favourites to win the event yet again.

Close behind in second place were Jane Smith and Alan Douglas with a little gap to Marge Way and Bill Tucker in third and then closely bunched were Julia Lunn and David Caldon, Judy Bussell and Sven Pride and Freya Giffen and Charles Hall in fourth, fifth and sixth respectively.

Jean Johnson and Joe Wakefield pulled themselves into seventh with a winning second session and rounding out the top ten were Magda Farag and John Burville, Rachael Gosling and Craig Hutton, and Janice Trott and Ernest Paynter.

Smolski-Petty are always favoured to win this event as not only have they been consistently at the top of the local game but are one of the few regular mixed-pair partnerships at the top. Their 69% first session put them in the strong position and a 62% second session was enough to hold off a determined performance by Smith-Douglas whose 64.5% and 63% sessions would often be good enough to win.

Way-Tucker were in touch after the first session and finished a solid third. Congratulations to all in what was a high-scoring event.

This week's hand demonstrates the value of staying calm when an unexpected dummy hits the table and following through with the planned play of a hand.

Dealer West

E-W vul

North

" A K Q

J 6 4

Q J 9 2

A Q 2

West East

" 8 2 " 10 9 4 3

A K 9 8 5 2 Q 10 3

10 6 8 4 3

J 9 7 K 5 3

South

" J 7 6 5

7

A K 7 5

10 8 6 4

West North East South

2 Double Pass " 3

Pass " 4 Pass Pass

Pass

When North doubled the weak two-bid for take-out, South showed his values with a leap to three spaces. As he had no attractive continuation, North raised this to game and West began by leading the ace-king of hearts.

While five diamonds might have been easier to play, that is no reason to fail in four spaces and declarer showed how to survive the moderately unfavourable layout shown. After ruffing the second heart, he crossed to dummy with a trump to the ace to ruff dummy's last heart. Then, after drawing two more rounds of trumps with dummy's king-queen, declarer simply played on diamonds.

This gave East the choice of two evils. The first was to ruff the fourth round of diamonds with the ten trumps and then to have to return a club into dummy's ace-queen, thereby conceding the contract. The second was to discard a club, which would allow declarer to cash the ace of clubs for his tenth trick.