I enjoyed a return to face-to-face bridge at the EBU's annual Summer Congress held in Eastbourne.  There were sensible but not overbearing precautions in place and there was a relaxed mood among players.  Turn-out was low as, no doubt, people will want 'feel their way' back into bridge as we previously knew and loved it.  Numbers for the one day Swiss Pairs that I played in were further hampered by it clashing with the two-day teams event.

As my regular partner wasn't available, I paired up with the promised host.  We plumped for a virtually 'No Systems' card on account of me only arriving with a few minutes to spare following a forty minute delay in a contraflow on the A27!  It served us well, though, as we finished fourth of twelve.

Given my arrival time, I was hoping for a nice easy hand to start with but, instead, picked up this collection

Hmm...  I'm sure that this would prove troublesome for even the most established partnerships.

One Heart?  Two clubs?  Something else?

Actually, if you take a look at the North hand, (Click on 'Show all Hands'), you'll see that it's slightly academic because North should really be opening her five card major whence 2 Clubs is possibly the only sensible response.  A tricky one for anyone to navigate though, I'm sure you'll agree.

Let's just say that you end up in 3NT by South.  What's your plan on a spade or a diamond lead.  How are you going to tackle the clubs.  You can reply in the form and I'll share the full story later.

Having won one of our matches 20-0 and not doing too bad in any of the others, we actually arrived at the top table for the final round.  Sadly, we were put in our place, twenty nil, by a very strong pair, which saw us tumble to fourth.

All in all, though, a nice return to face-to-face bridge, which will hopefully be coming back soon to Enfield.  Please keep an eye on the website for updates.