Janet de Botton

Bridge | 17 March 2016

issue 19 March 2016

The past couple of weeks have been the first since the New Year that we haven’t played a tournament of some international prestige, so I am going to go back to the Lederer weekend at the end of February, London’s premier invitational event. It was held at the extremely elegant RAC Club in Pall Mall, which has a strict ‘smart’ dress code. It is rather funny to see bridge players looking as though they are going to their own wedding!

Ten teams were invited by Ian Payn, chairman of the organising body, and sponsor Simon Gillis to try to prise the trophy away from the England Open Team who won it last year. I was fortunate enough to have Norwegian-born world champion Geir Helgemo on my team, widely considered to be the best player in the world. Here he is playing with Thor Erik Hoftaniska against England’s Tony Forrester and David Bakhshi, on one of the few hands England lost:

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