Bridge - The Scotsman 11/06/12

ONE of the last events of the season is the Benjamin, the invitational individual for the highest ranked players on the Master Point ranking list, plus the six players who have won most national points in the past three seasons.

This year’s top places were all filled by players from the latter group: Alan Goodman won a split tie with Bob McKinnon, and Ying Piper was third.

Everybody reached 3NT on this board. North led the jack of spades, South won the ace and returned a spade, forcing declarer to take a discard in dummy. The declarers divided into two equal groups. Optimists discarded a heart, expecting diamonds to provide six tricks and hoping that a tenth trick might appear from somewhere. Pessimists discarded a diamond, hoping to cope with a bad diamond break by cashing hearts instead of diamonds.

Optimists were unlucky. When South won the ace of diamonds he cleared spades. When diamonds did not break declarer cashed two clubs and played a heart, but South held up his ace so that he could later strand declarer in dummy and make a diamond trick. The pessimists had prudently kept three hearts, so that South could not effectively hold up his ace

The other Ranked Masters Individuals are the Harrison for Scottish Masters and above, won by Alistair Crawford of Glasgow; the Shenkin for Masters and Senior masters, won by Derek French of Perth; and the Fairlie for District Masters and below, won by Vince Elliott of Ayrshire.