We arrived at the local bridge club on Wednesday to a rather unusual sight. The club uses the community hall of a local army barracks where we have around eight solid tables backed up with half a dozen fold-up bridge tables. The army chose to get rid of their solid tables and the bridge club pointed out that further fold-up tables would be required. The army duly purchased replacement tables, in use for the first time that night.

Now, I have just looked up the standard size of a bridge table on the internet which took all of 30 seconds. 30 inches x 30 inches (2.5 feet square) seems to be common give or take an inch or two — and what's a couple of inches between friends? The tables the army bought... 3 feet x 6 feet! Er, right. So North has to pass the board to East for them to remove the cards, then over to West, and playing dummy lengthways is certainly more interesting. Obviously the army have a different concept to bridge than we do.

Anyway, enough about the poor tables, how about some poor bridge? I'm sitting North (deal rotated for convenience — if only the table had been rotated too), dealer East, E/W vulnerable.

In an uncontested auction partner opened 1 and I decided my 9 count wasn't worth a 2/1 so contented myself with 1. Partner rebid 1NT, 15-17 balanced. Most people with a 9 count and a good 5 card suit would raise to 3NT without passing go, building a fort or enhancing their share portfolio. For some reason I decided to only invite, turned down by partner who played in 2NT. Actually why do I keep saying partner instead of Karen? Naming and shaming is what we're about!

Here's the full deal:

As you can see the wimpish bidding paid off — the club finesse is wrong so only eight tricks are there. West led 8, the fourth highest of her longest and strongest suit — something that I strongly advocate [Glad he's learned something then! — Ed]. Karen correctly rose with Q on table, crossed to hand with a top diamond and took the losing club finesse.

You might think the defence would cash four hearts and declarer claim the remainder. Let's see what actually happened. East returned a heart to declarer's K and West's A. When West cashed J dummy pitched a spade and East "unblocked" T. Genius! It didn't help declarer as the ellusive ninth trick still wasn't there. The 9 was cashed and West switched to a low spade going to the J, K and A. Declarer cashed clubs coming to this three-card ending:

A genuine automatic squeeze had emerged should one of the defenders hold QJ and Q, though as we can see this isn't the case. When Karen cashed 8 East pitched 6, Karen 4 and the action was on West. A quick count of the hand would tell her that declarer must hold K and, as Karen rejected an invite, there was a fair chance that her partner held J. An obvious diamond pitch? Not a bit of it, West pitched Q making dummy's T good.

So, the contract made nine tricks. No? Ah, Karen seemed to be oblivious to the now boss T and played a diamond to the king, making just eight tricks. This justified my invite I reckon! In the post mortem I apologised for not bidding game, even though it goes a trick off. East apologised to her partner saying that she should have unblocked the heart at trick one. Er, what?