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!

Royston Bridge Club – Thursday Pairs, 30 July

Congratulations to Malcolm and Ron, whose excellent 67.08% comfortably topped the field, finishing more than five percentage points ahead of Will and Sylvia on 61.67%. Keith and Steve completed the podium with 57.08%. There was plenty of healthy competition through the middle of the rankings, with less than three percentage points separating fourth from seventh.

Featured Board – Board 11

One hand neatly illustrated the eternal bridge question: just because a slam can be bid, should it?

Several Wests reached 6♥️, but only one declarer failed, finishing one trick short after North's ♦️A lead for +50 to North-South. The remaining slam bidders brought home all twelve tricks for +980. Pairs who stopped safely in 4♥️ collected respectable scores, but those who judged the slam correctly reaped the rewards. As so often, duplicate bridge is about balancing optimism with practicality. On this occasion, the bold bidders were usually smiling, but not always.

A few other boards were worthy of comment. Board 10 rewarded brave defence, with Malcolm and Ron collecting +500 by defeating 5♦️ doubled by two tricks, while Board 18 produced one of the largest penalties of the evening when 1NT doubled drifted six tricks off for -1400. Doubling can be a powerful weapon!

Well played to everyone, and congratulations again to Malcolm and Ron. We look forward to another enjoyable evening of bridge next Thursday.

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.