Nothing happening locally and the focus now shifts to the ACBL Summer Nationals in Las Vegas — a number of pairs will travel there in addition to the large group going from the youth programme.

I’ll keep you advised if any good things happen.

Today’s hand (Fig 1), like most in this column, is instructional and if you absorb the key plays in this hand it will save you hundreds, even thousands, of match points over the years.

The bidding was over quickly — South opened a 15-17. No trump and North had an easy raise to 3NT.

West led the Spade 3 to East’s jack and South immediately had two key decisions: the first one was whether to really think about the hand, and the second one was to try and make the right play.

Many declarers won the first trick, led the 10 of Clubs and ran it, and then closed their eyes and hoped.

Well, not long after they opened their eyes they were one down — East won the king and returned a Spade and West cashed four tricks. The full hand is shown in Fig 2.

The right play on this hand is a baby play for an experienced declarer, but even an intermediate player should get it right with a bit of thought.

Clearly if West has the king of Clubs all will be well — but what if East has it?

Exactly — declarer must remove the Spades from the East hand and make a hold up play — duck the Spade jack!

Now the defence has no answer. East continues a Spade, but now when East wins the Club king he has no Spade left to lead, and if he did the Spades would be breaking 4-3 and the contract is safe.

The interesting thing is that if South had started with Axx of Spades he would recognise the hold up play, but quite often declarer do not recognise it when they start with AQx, KQx or KJx.

Take a good look at the play, and more importantly the thinking behind the play, and you will turn a lot of bad results into good ones.