Last week, we saw the action from Saturday’s matches on the third and final weekend of the English Premier League. With just three matches left to play, these are the overnight standings:

With a significant lead, DE BOTTON are clear favourites, but the schedule has been arranged so that the leading teams all still have to play each other on this final day.

As usual, we start with some problems. Firstly, with both sides vulnerable, you are North holding:

What do you bid?

Next, with both sides vulnerable, you are sitting East with this motley collection:

What action, if any, do you take?

Finally, with only your side vulnerable, you hold in the North seat:

What action, if any, do you take?

The BBO VuGraph match for Round 19 features the teams lying in second and third place, BLACK and HINDEN respectively. Both North players had to decide what to do with the misfitting 19-count in the first of this week’s problems:

You have a good-looking 19-count and partner has opened the bidding. However, you hold only one ace, and a singleton in the suit that partner has bid three times. How good do you think this hand is?

John Atthey (left) represented England three times in the Schools Teams event at European Championships between 2002 and 2005, and then in the Junior Teams in 2009. On this deal, he decided that the flaws in his hand outweighed the high point count, so he settled for a conservative 3NT.

Although the South hand is missing the ♣K, 6NT is actually a reasonable spot unless the defenders can find an unlikely club lead. Only the 5-2 heart split holds declarer to eleven tricks. N/S +660.

Simon Cope took a more optimistic view of the North hand, and chose a quantitative jump to 4NT. With two aces, Peter Crouch decided that his hand was good enough to accept the invitation. However, he also chose to play in clubs rather than no-trumps, and that contract has only one small chance of making – the ♣K dropping singleton with five missing. Not the best of slams: N/S -100 and 13 IMPs to HINDEN.

BLACK picked up 10 IMPs on the final board of the match, but HINDEN still won 40-13. In the other key match of the round, DE BOTTON defeated PENFOLD by a margin of 4 IMPs, but that was still enough to widen the gap between the leaders and the rest of the field.

Round 20 brings the head-to-head meeting between the leaders and their nearest challengers, with DE BOTTON meeting BLACK. It turned out to be a slugfest, with more than 100 IMPs changing hands over the 16 boards. More surprisingly, perhaps, it was also very one-sided. I was spoiled for choice, with seven double-figure swings to choose from, so here is a flavour of how things went.

DE BOTTON’s Scandinavians were a little unlucky on our first exhibit, although they did also perhaps contribute to their own demise, when both East players had to answer this week’s second problem.

Andrew McIntosh (right) is a former Scottish Junior international and Camrose player. He has since moved South across the border, and he made his debut in the England Open team at the 2010 European Championships. He was a member of the Anglo-Irish team that finished fourth at the 2015 European Transnational Championships. Since joining the BLACK team, he has finished on the podium at three major championships: collecting a silver medal at the 2016 European Winter Games, finishing third in the 2018 European Champions Cup, and collecting a bronze medal for reaching the semi-final of the Rosenblum Cup at the World Championships in Wroclaw earlier this year.

We have spoken many times in these pages about the dangers of sacrificing on balanced hands, in part because the penalty is often more than you expect. Here, McIntosh remained silent perhaps for fear of poking the hornet’s nest. Despite his partner’s strong bidding, David Bakhshi did not have quite enough to do anything but retreat to 4♥, and there matters were allowed to rest.

The slam is a marginal one, around a 50% shot, essentially needing either trumps 2-2 or a singleton queen (or a winning guess if West started with Q-x-x). They were 2-2, so Townsend lost just one club trick: N/S +680.

In the same position as Bakhshi at the first table, perhaps Andrew Black would have bid something more ambitious than 4♥, but we will never know. Thor Erik Hoftaniska decided to up the ante to 5♣ on the East hand, and now Black competed to the five-level. That was all the encouragement David Gold needed to take a shot at the slam. With trumps behaving, there was nothing to the play: N/S +1430 and 13 IMPs to BLACK.

Later in the set, both North players were faced with the third of this week’s problem hands:

David Gold (left) was a member of the England Junior team at the 2002 European Championships and at the World Youth Games the following year. He then made his debut in his country’s Open team in 2004. He was a member of the England team that reached the final at the 2008 World Championships in Beijing, and he again collected a silver medal at the 2014 European Championships. Two years later, he went one better, winning the Open Teams at the 2016 European Winter Games. He has also twice collected a medal from the Open Pairs at a European Transnational Championship, bronze in 2005 playing with Tom Townend and silver in 2019 in partnership with Richard Plackett.

On this deal, Gold judged to defend 5♦-X. This was one of those boards on which everyone seems to have a good hand, but no one can make much more than the square root of nothing. In a kind of apt symmetry, both sides have a pair of cashing A-Ks, including the top cards in the other side’s longest suit. The defence had no trouble scoring two spades and two diamonds to hold declarer to nine tricks: N/S +300.

After an identical auction, Tom Townsend chose to remove the double to 5♥ on the North hand. Tom Paske doubled on the way out, and the defenders collected two clubs and two hearts. Only nine tricks for declarer here too: N/S -500 and another 13 IMPs to BLACK.

BLACK won the match 80-28, halving the leaders’ advantage at the top of the table, but it would still take a remarkable combination of results to dislodge DE BOTTON’s hold on the title.

In the final round of the event, DE BOTTON faces HINDEN on BBO VuGraph. In the other key match, BLACK would be playing PENFOLD. This early deal posed a bidding problem for the E/W pairs:

Atthey agreed hearts and showed a better than minimum opening with his jump to 3♥. Although not alerted or explained in the VuGraph records, perhaps 3♠ was ‘serious’, showing real slam interest. A series a cue-bids led to Atthey jumping to 6♥. The key to the hand, though, is the double fit in the red suits, and that was never really appreciated. Declarer has five tricks in each red suit, two black aces, and a club ruff for 13: E/W +1010.

After the same start to the auction, Espen Erichsen also rolled out some sort of slam-interest showing bid (3NT in this case). South’s double of East’s club cue-bid allowed West to show the ♣A via a redouble, which meant that Thor Erik Hoftaniska (right) could bid Blackwood despite holding a void. When Erichsen confirmed that he held all of the missing key-cards, Hoftaniska decided that he could count 13 tricks. Well judged! E/W +1510 and 11 IMPs to DE BOTTON.

There were no late heroics. DE BOTTON won 30-16 against HINDEN. BLACK also won by a similar amount.

After three weekends of play and three 16-board matches against each of the other seven teams, these are the final standings in Division One of the 2022 English Premier League:

Congratulation to the DE BOTTON team: Janet de Botton, Artur Malinowski, Thor Erik Hoftaniska, Espen Erichsen, Tom Townsend and David Bakhshi.

We will be travelling south across the English Channel next week to bring you the best of the action from the final weekend of the French Premier League.