Janet de Botton

Bridge | 04 July 2020

issue 04 July 2020

What do we want? We want to play bridge. But who anticipated Covid-19 was going to close every bridge club in the country — make that the universe — and also cancel (or postpone) every tournament, big or small, world championship or fun. It seemed to take a nanosecond to move everything online and not much longer for Dutch player/writer/journalist Jan van Cleeff, with help from Holland’s bridge elite, to set up the ALT Invitational series which ended its first season last week, with Team Gupta beating Team Lavazza (both fielding multi world champs) in a virtual world-class final. Would they have got this one right at the table? (See diagram).

N/S had done well to get to 3NT, given West’s point-poor opening. West led the ♠Jack to Declarer’s Queen. What would you play at trick two? Don’t feel bad if you didn’t get it, there are prob only a handful of players alive who wouldn’t automatically take the diamond finesse through the opener.

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