It must be Summer. England fail at another major football tournament, England fail at One Day Cricket, my bedroom gets infested with craneflies flying in through the windows which I can't close because the room gets too hot otherwise and, apparently, the well of poor bridge dries up. So no spectacular hands for you this week from exciting foreign climes, just some good solid rubbish bridge that was witnessed just yesterday at the Hertfordshire Swiss Teams in Stevenage where we actually did pretty well for a change. And if anybody has a desire to see their own rubbish bridge published here, then go ahead and send it in!

This is only a short chapter but I had to put it in first up to highlight the sheer brilliance of this opening lead. We wouldn't want it buried further down the page and hide Steve's light under a bushel, would we? What do you lead from this holding:

Your grandma would lead fourth highest from that longest and strongest heart suit. Your mother might lead the "normal" J. We could get into a debate over whether the K is better but it's all, frankly, rather irrelevant as this is the full deal:

Whichever heart you lead, it's curtains for declarer. Steve led the 2! Declarer won the J and tried to lead towards the K but found she wasn't in the right hand. So instead she led a cunning 9 off table. Bryony wasn't quite up to the genius defence of rising with the Queen to clear the hearts while North still held the A and the contract rolled home for a large swing out. We're still asking him why.

I seem to have a wealth of material hanging around on the so-called Idiot Coup and one day I might stop fooling about and get round to writing an article or three on the subject. Until that distant day comes, here's a little taster.

At our table, the bidding was as follows:

I so wanted to compete but was worried about the marked A J x x x sitting over me and that it was all a horrible misfit. Declarer racked up the contract pretty easily and we grudgingly noted that 3 would have made. Nice psyche...

At the other table, Steve was a bit more aggressive with his hand.

East kicks off with a diamond which goes to the A. West neglects to give his partner a ruff, playing a heart instead but this isn't fatal. Steve wins the Ace, cashes the A and plays the J, executing an idiot coup when East covers with the Q! However, this still isn't fatal. Will West find the blindingly obvious diamond play? No, he plays the K. This is fatal, and the somewhat optimistic contract comes in for a handy gain. Always cover those honours — imagine how stupid you'd look if declarer was capable of World Class deception and had A K J x x x x!

For the last little ditty this week, I held this hand:

I won't bore you with the details of our, shall we say non-standard, auction. Luke opened in hearts and my first thought was that this is a Good Hand. So I enquired and partner showed spades too and I thought that this is now a Very Good Hand. About 10 bids later I was bidding spades for the first time at the 6 level and notching up the contract pretty quickly. Let's now catch a bus over to the other table and see what happened there.

Steve and Bryony's opponent didn't take quite the same view as I did. In fact, we believe that he had mis-sorted his hand and also confused the K with the 4 — an easy mistake to make. He must have thought he held:

His partner opened 1, he responded 1 and his partner jumped to 3 (showing a good hand, people, and with four spades too!). Unfortunately, he didn't think he had a particularly Good Hand, so made an amazingly timid raise to 4. When he put his cards down on dummy and realised what his hand actually was, you could probably see the blushes from across the room.