Call me nuts but on 29 December I left lovely, sunny, delicious France for the fairly unlovely Royal National Hotel to play the year end’s last event, the one-day Swiss Teams. God it was fun. I hadn’t played a hand in 12 days (and counting) and we were all in a great mood (unusual), rested (unheard of) and winning our matches big (lovely). We needed only to avoid a massive defeat in the last match and the title was ours. We drew my friend Simon Gillis, playing with Norwegian world champion Erik Saelensminde. Were we complacent? Yes. Were we awful? Yes. And did we lose big? Yes again. Take this disaster:
The ♣K was led at both tables and won in dummy. Declarer played a trump to hand — getting the bad news — and a heart to West’s Ace.
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