Last week I got an email from one of my readers — the other one is possibly away for the summer. His name was Paddy and he wrote as follows: ‘Dear Janet, I love your column [I warmed to him immediately] but I have been rather confused lately. I’m not a good player, and I have spent most of my life trying to win tricks as cheaply as possible, but recently you have featured several hands where you advocate playing an unnecessarily high card. I think learning players like myself would be better served by just reading about plain, old-fashioned good bridge.’
I take your point Paddy, but sometimes it is hard to distinguish between the two. Today’s hand is about plain old-fashioned good bridge, with one problem — the contract made. One tiny ‘unnecessary’ amendment brings it crashing down.
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