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

Sessions held every Thursday at 7.30pm 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.

The HBA Cadet Pairs has always been a popular competition with club members, and in recent years at least one qualifying pair from Royston has gone on to play in the final at Welwyn.

To counter the fall in number of members eligible to compete in Cadet competitions, the HBA has significantly relaxed the entry criteria for those competitions. The two Cadet competitions have been re-badged as "Ranked Masters" competitions (they now become the Ranked Masters Pairs and the Ranked Masters Teams), and any player of Master Point rank of 5* Master or below (roughly two thirds of the club) is now eligible to play in either of these Ranked Masters competitions.

Please note that the Ranked Masters Teams event is taking place soon (in St Albans on Sunday 2nd February at 4pm), and the club will be happy to pay the entry fee for any Royston team(s) who want to enter. To express an interest, please contact the club's Competitions co-ordinator, Peter Grice.

The Ranked Masters Pairs will be taking place a couple of months later at Welwyn on Friday 3rd April at 7.30pm, and the club will be announcing a date for the Royston heat of this competition in the near future.

A useful summary of HBA and other competitions can be found on the club website under Documents/External Competitions, and full details for all HBA competitions can be found on the HBA website. If not sure of your Master Point rank, you can find out from the Member area on the EBU website ("My EBU") or the Member area on the club website ("Members Only").

For the second consecutive week in January, a Grand Slam was bid and made at Royston — this time by two pairs, Ron & Malcolm and Peter & Ruth.

Board 8 on 9th January wasn't just about bidding, unlike the previous week's laydown grand slam — whether the Grand Slam this time was the percentage contract at MP scoring is a close call. Certainly, this one was far from laydown as the cards lie, requiring declarer to locate the missing ♥Q (or get a favourable lead).

But one way or another four declarers out of six made thirteen tricks despite the spades not breaking 3-3, so perhaps the Grand Slam wasn't as marginal as all that? As the cards lie, it's all too easy for North to discard a tell-tale heart on the third spade, giving the heart layout away. A case of "fortune favours the bold" on this occasion, perhaps.

This is Royston Bridge Club's official website, Dave Simmons is the current web administrator.

Please have a browse through the website. 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.

Any comments or suggestions for improving the website are welcome. Just email me at dave.simmons4@gmail.com or via Contact Us.