The Night of the Stars charity bridge event, held in West London a couple of weeks ago, was every bit as fun as I’d hoped: 53 stars of the game mingled with — well, let us be known as the eclipses — for an evening’s duplicate.
My partner wasn’t one of the official stars, but he’s without doubt one in the rising — young Tom ‘Mini’ Paske, aged 23. We did pretty well, finishing eighth out of 112 pairs. And he’s a gentleman to boot: when we were going through some of the hands afterwards, he pointed to one and said, ‘We did well here.’ ‘But that was entirely you — you were declarer!’ I exclaimed. ‘Ah, but you gave me the perfect dummy,’ he replied.
A dummy, however, is only what you make of it — as he so elegantly proved:
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