I usually play at my local club on Friday nights, where there is little chance for poorbridge [Ok, ok, no need to brag about it! We're all very jealous. —Ed]. Although the chance was there yesterday since it was a worldwide sim, and the last worldwide sim I played resulted in an article (An Active Defense).

But I was down with a bad case of the flu, so stepping out of home was out of the question and I was resigned to BBO for my dose of bridge. One of my school club juniors asked me if I could host their intra-club league match for them. A brief explanation: Their teacher-in-charge is a fervent bridge player as well and he suggested an online league within the club to allow for more practice. Being a helpful member of the alumni, I became the director for these matches.

The two teams playing had finished quite well in a recent schools tournament, so I was hoping for a good match.

It took all of 2 boards (out of 12) for this hope to shattered:

At both tables, they ended up in 4 by North. Now, one can easily see eleven tricks right? Wrong! My juniors proceeded to show me their skill in dropping tricks.

Closed Room: A club was led, taken by West who returned his singleton heart. Declarer drew trumps, then played a diamond to...the Queen. Now there was no way for the last heart to be discarded on the A and ten tricks were taken.

Open Room: Q was led, taken by declarer in hand. Now, the same diamond finesse which lost, West played off two top clubs, the second ruffed by declarer. Now, declarer tried to outdo his peer in the closed room, he tried to cash another top heart! This was ruffed and of course, only nine tricks taken.

After 5 boards, the score was a whopping 42-0. By now, quite a few other seniors/alumni were taking their seats in the gallery and we were already amused by the proceedings. More hilarity ensued along the way to the last board (score now 55-15), which gave us the most amount of entertainment courtesy of the closed room:

A brief mention that at this point in time, we had more kibitzers, one being an executive committee member from our NCBO.

By the end of the bidding sequence, the kibitzers were all in stitches. Not happy being in 1X with his 10 points and two card support, South decided to show his spades. After North ran to 2 and got doubled again, South decided that hearts was the best place, after all. Not happy at the possibility of ending up in 2X, North decides to give himself a greater declaring challenge by going to 3! And now East, after thinking that 1 was going down, decides that 3 isn't and happily passes.

3 naturally made but the play was, of course, not as entertaining as the bidding.

After this, I had requests from some of the kibitzers requesting that I inform them of the next team match between my juniors. One even stated that he was willing to pay for any admission tickets if required!