The Pakistan Bridge Federation is making efforts to promote bridge and generate more interest among bridge playing community in the country, with a view to bring up young blood in the game. One has to be optimistic about finding young talented players to match the skill with the leading bridge players of the country.

Apart from intellectual pursuit and pastime bridge is not an easy game to play at the international competition for which there has to be regular bridge sessions of study and practice to improve standards of the game. With the initiative of Pakistan Bridge Federation, the duplicate bridge sessions are held at Karachi, Lahore and Islamabad, where regular bridge tournaments are conducted. But there are other cities like Hyderabad, Peshawar, Quetta, Faisalabad etc. where the attention of Pakistan Bridge Federation, is required to organise regular bridge competitions to widen the scope of the game at the national level.

According to a survey the Karachi centre takes the lead in organising regular bridge competitions followed by Lahore and Islamabad. There is also a need to organise more inter-provincial competitions to generate more interest in the game. Numerically more young and promising bridge players in Karachi are taken keen interest in bridge.

The Karachi Bridge Association can rightly claim to have produced young players like Sarfraz Ahmed Khan, Imran Jhaka, Hamid Mohiuddin, Tehseen Gheewala, Mohammad Amin, Khalid Mohiuddin, etc. who have performed well in international junior championships in the recent past. There are other upcoming players who need a bit of grooming to develop consistent approach to the game, and without doubt, they can prove assets for the country's bridge.

A hand is reproduced here which was played by relatively young players at the team event on 10th of October at Aslam Bridge Hall Karachi, which reflects keen sense of assessment of the strength and also high standard of bidding technique.

There was a tough competition between the team of Candyland and Ahmed IV.

East led club king:

South and North showed complete understanding in bidding to reach a grand slam in spades and made it to the surprise of the kibitzers. Particularly the South made a cue bid one after the other to reassure his partner of a strong hand and the third cue bid showed perfect agreement in spades

with a grand slam interest.

Incidentally it is a rare feat in the game to venture a grand slam try against an opening bid by the opponents.

When a strong dummy came down the North was hoping to succeed in making the contract either by finessing the jack of hearts or if the diamond suit broke favourably.

Therefore, after ruffing the king of clubs, the declarer played two rounds of trump ending in dummy and played ace king of diamonds from dummy and ruffed a third diamond in hand. He found out that the suit was not breaking.

Then the declarer entered the dummy by ruffing a club and played back another diamond and ruffed in hand. At this point he moved a small heart from hand and finessed the jack of hearts against the marked queen of hearts with the opener, which succeeded and next Comdr. Sami played king and ace of hearts making a grand slam via unusual bidding sequences, which their opponents in the close room settled for a small slam in spades.

This was a superb feat of making a grand slam through intelligent bidding technique and making it with a finesse.

Golden Tips: A good bidding technique is the hallmark to ensure an optimum level of contract.

Dealer East

North-South Vulnerable

North

S Q10653

H K752

D 84

C 105

West

S 94

H 63

D J1062

C Q9763

East

S 7

H Q1094

D Q5

C AKJ842

South

S AKJ82

H AJ8

D AK973

C ---

The bidding:

=========================

West  North  East   South

Hasan Comdr  Khalid Ahmed

Askari Sami Mohiuddin

---    ---    1C       2C

3C      3S    4C       5C

Pass    5S    Pass     6C

Pass    6H    Pass     7S

=========================

Copyright Business Recorder, 2004