Could Scottish bridge compete with the country’s people and places? It was a tall order, After touring the Highlands and thrilling to glassy lakes (lochs) flanked with hills rising into the clouds, my wife and I understood why the Rough Guide handbook called Scotland the most beautiful country on Earth. Scots, uniformly warm-hearted in our experience, have invented everything from penicillin to TV to Dolly the cloned sheep.

Yet when we entered Edinburgh’s New Melville Bridge Club, there were still more wonders to behold. Located in its own building, the club has three playing rooms, two cloakrooms and plenty of sweets. Players used electronic Bridgemate scoring with a welcome line for opening leads. Club director Mike Ash announced our presence, and players rotated to our table with warm greetings and soft condolences about our cartoon graveyard across the pond. There was a refreshments break after three boards and there was also such a relaxed cadence we didn’t mind that play took four hours.

Ash warned us that most of the players were in the developing stage, but we finished only seventh among 16 North-South pairs. Even so, there were places where experience counted. I was sitting North and dealing, with North-South vulnerable:

NORTH

♠ A Q J 9 8 7 4
♥ —
♦ —
♣A Q 10 6 5 2

WEST                        EAST
♠ 6 5                          ♠10 2
♥ Q 10 8 6 5              ♥A K 4 3
♦ K Q 8 6 5               ♦A 10 9 7 4 2
♣ K                            ♣ 7

SOUTH
♠ K 3
♥ J 9 7 2
♦ J 3
♣ J 9 8 4 3

How would you open this hand? Strong two-suiters appear maybe once every five years, and you’d better take advantage of them. The Melville commentary sheet recommended opening the strong and artificial 2 ♣. Here’s a good auction as described to me by an expert:

North          East          South          West
2♣              Pass          2 ♦              Pass
2♠              Pass          2NT             Pass
3♣              Pass          4 ♣              Pass
4♦*            Pass          4 ♠ **         Pass
5 ♥ ***      Pass          6 ♣              All Pass

* First round control
** Second round control
*** First round control

Contract: 6♣
Opening lead: ♥A

I saw no way to show my extreme distribution without opening 1♠ and jumping to 3 ♣, admittedly risking a passout after my opener. With only two losers, experience taught me that a slam was likely, not withstanding bidding complications. It’s tough enough to show one void, much less two.

Our bidding proceeded as follows:

North          East          South          West
1♠              Pass          1NT            Pass
3♣              Pass          3 ♠             Pass
6♠             All Pass

A 6♣ slam would have been safer to bid than 6 ♠ , but we were happy making seven. Not every table was in slam, possibly because East may have overcalled 2 ♦ . Yet there’s still a way to bid slam in a spirited auction:

North          East          South          West
1♠              2 ♦            Pass            4♦
6 ♣            All Pass

As Michael Douglas said in the movie Black Rain, sometimes you just have to go for it.

While we prepared to leave the clean, classy and cultured capital city built around a castle on a hill for the next stage of our journey, a player told us, “Edinburgh has style, but Glasgow has soul.”

Stay tuned.