There were 8 pairs in competition Monday night as our club hosted the American Contract Bridge League’s annual ACBL-Wide Charity Game. ACBL sends identical deals for this special game to all the participating clubs in the United States. Hand records are included with the package so that our players can enjoy studying and learning from analyses of the deals by bridge experts. Monday night’s Charity Game winners were: Lou Thurston and Mary Tryer, first; Dick and Linda Hahn, second; Dorothy Genz and Audrey Harrison, third; and Bev Gresham and Mary Swafford, second in Flight B. Congratulations to Lou Thurston, who won Player of the Month honors for November.

The extra table fees charged to host this event are sent to the ACBL Charity Foundation. The monies from the participating clubs will then be distributed by the ACBL Charity Foundation to the various bridge districts (the Texas district in our case), and the bridge districts will make donations to the charities of their choice.

Audrey and Dorothy were the only pair to make the spade slam on Deal 11 (see diagram.) Unless East summons the courage to start with a heart on the opening lead, the slam will make. But, declarer has to be careful not lose concentration.

Suppose the opening lead is a trump. After some study, declarer sees that he must try to reverse the dummy, i.e. establish one of South’s clubs for a heart discard. Declarer should win the trump lead in hand and draw another round of trumps. Then declarer must start working on the clubs by leading the club ace and another club. West will win and switch to a heart, but the tempo belongs to declarer (North). Declarer takes dummy’s ace of hearts and ruffs a club.

Now, dear readers, this plan should be a simple thing for North, but some players might lose concentration in the heat of battle. North must ruff dummy’s club with a high spade, NOT THE SPADE DUCE! North then leads the ace and king of diamonds and ruffs a diamond in dummy.

Declarer ruffs another club in hand with another high spade, preserving his beautiful duce of spades as an entry to dummy’s nine of spades for the heart discard on dummy’s established club.

So, in summary, this deal contains a dummy reversal, a subject of this column on many occasions, and a bridge tactic that is not always obvious for bridge players to see and execute. The secondary point of this column might seem so elementary that it is hardly worth noting, but judging from past painful experience, it seems to me to be worth a mention. Declarer must watch his high cards in trumps and entries to dummy carefully and try not to have what many of us would call a “Senior Moment” that can spell disaster.

Be sure to join us for our next game on Monday, December 7, at 7 p.m. in the Woman’s Club building, and be sure to mark your bridge calendars for our club Christmas party on December 14.

Our Christmas party starts an hour early at 6 p.m. and features a turkey dinner with all the trimmings and lots of holiday cheer!

Call 592-2374 for partners. And, don’t forget to visit our Kingsville Club and Unit 187 web site at http://d16acbl.org/U187/ Kingsville/kingsville.html.