Our ♣ sparkles like a ♦, has a big ♥ and ♠♠♠ of bonhomie, boosted by beverage, biscuits, and banter before bridge begins.

Sessions held every Thursday at 7.00pm at the Coombes Community Centre, Burns Road, Royston.

The club has electronic scoring and computer-dealt hands so results and deals are available straight away.

Visitors are always welcome but need to come with a partner. If you are new to the area, use Find a Partner (Public) and the club will make every effort to provide a suitable partner for you.

◄ For further details, see Information and Calendar.

◄ Do you want to learn to play bridge, or improve your play? See Learning Bridge.

◄ We also feature a few interesting hands played at the club recently, see Hand of the Month.

It was good to see a couple of familiar names from Royston playing in the HBA Green-pointed Swiss Pairs, held face-to-face at Leverstock Green recently. Jules & Brian did very well to finish sixth with 88 VPs, having taken on a selection of the strong field of 30 pairs from Hertfordshire and beyond.

The event consisted of seven rounds of seven boards per round, and they scored 88 VPs overall. The results can be found in the usual way on the HBA website, or by clicking here.

On close inspection, I notice that they played rounds against both the eventual winners and runners-up in the Swiss format, halving both rounds 10-10, so they certainly earned their one and a quarter green-points the hard way!

Thursday's Pairs attracted a 16 pairs for a rather noisy 8 full tables! Congratulations go to Malcolm and Ron, whose impressive 63.39% secured another victory. Colin and Patrick finished a clear second on 59.23%, while Colin and Faraj completed the podium with 57.44%.

The featured deal was Board 16:

East-West hold a combined 33 high-card points and excellent controls, so it's no surprise that three pairs ventured into 6NT. Two made comfortably, but one declarer was defeated after North found the testing ♥ lead. At another table, the defenders collected a remarkable +100 when 6NT failed by a trick, while elsewhere declarers quietly settled for 3NT or 5NT and collected solid scores. In matchpoint pairs, discretion occasionally beats ambition... but only just.

This is Royston Bridge Club's official website, Will Huggins is the current web administrator.

Some pages are only available to Members. To access these pages click on the link to Members Only on the top right of the Home page to login.