Stamford Bridge Club’s weekend away is not deterred by Storm Éowyn

Stamford Bridge Club's annual weekend away was at the end of January, writes Trevor Thrower, of Stamford Bridge Club.

Seventy members travelled to Links Country Park hotel in West Runton with two players prevented from travelling due to Storm Éowyn. The success of the weekend was due to the organisation of John Dutton, Cliff Orme organised all the equipment required for the weekend including dealing 322 hands and David Banks provided the evening entertainment on Friday night.

The main pairs event on Friday afternoon was won by Trevor Thrower and David Banks (North South) and Doreen Simpson and Helen Skelton (East West). The teams event on Sunday combined pairs based on their performance on Friday afternoon with top pair teamed up with the bottom pair, second place with second bottom etc. This teams event was won by Sue Moss and Briony Newington with Geoff Jones and Katherine Danks.

Hand of the Week

This hand was played during the weekend away. After an opening bid of 1H from North guaranteeing at least 5 cards in hearts, East overcalled in spades, South bid 2D and West raised the spade bid. North has only 14 high card points but needs to evaluate how many extra his distribution is worth. North should be adding four points for the void with the trump fit (many add five points for a void but best not to add more points than number of trumps held). The six card heart suit is a strong feature as it can be set up for discards in the South hand. North considered his next bid.

South has at most two hearts because they would have supported partner with three or more, so there is probably at most one heart loser. South should have at least 5 cards in diamonds and should have a reasonable quality suit. There is a good chance that South's losing clubs could be discarded on the heart suit once set up. Having considered his options North bid 6D.

The H7 was led, declarer realised that the only reason for this lead was that it was a singleton. The play was fairly routine, playing ace and immediately playing the small heart from dummy. Now it was easy to cash one top trump in hand, ruff the hearts with the high trumps using the DK and D9 as entries to the dummy. The fifth and sixth hearts provided discards for the losing club and one of the spades. This was the only slam bid on this hand so scored all the matchpoints.