Win Allegaert and Jaggy Shivdasani had a spectacularly successful tournament, winning the Open Pairs and the Patton Teams - their attempt to play in the Mixed Pairs to complete the set was less successful!

Their winning margin in the Open Pairs sas an astounding 9%. Part of the margin came on this hand against Quantin and Abecassis, where Win drew a delicate inference to be the only declarer to bring home his game.

Dealer South. EW Game A K J 4 2 A 5 8 6 Q 9 4 2 10 6 3 Q 9 8 7 9 8 4 3 10 K 10 7 2 J 9 4 8 6 A K J 10 5 5 K Q J 7 6 2 A Q 5 3 7 3 West North East South Jaggy Win 1 Pass 1 Pass 2 Pass 3 Dble 3 Pass 4 All Pass

Four hearts is not a terrible contract but the cards do lie very poorly. Win got the 8 lead to the nine, ten and his three. East cashed the A and then tried to create trump tricks for his partner by leading the K - a low club would have worked better as the cards lie, but that was far from clear at the time.

Win ruffed high and paused for reflection when West threw the 3. The diamond finesse, though tempting, was a broken reed. East had failed to overcall with a good club suit and apparently the Q - he could hardly have the K as well.

Backing his judgement, Win drew three rounds of trumps, discovering the bad news, and then cashed the AK. Now he led the winning Q and West could not ruff or else he would be endplayed to lead diamonds into the ace-queen. So he discarded a diamond, but Win simply ruffed a spade to hand and endplayed West with his trump winner to lead diamonds in the two-card ending. (West could have defeatd the contract by discarding a diamond rather than a club at trick three, but that does not detract from Allegaert's card reading).