Like many of the juniors, I was introduced to bridge while at Reading School. I started playing competitively five years ago, aged 18, winning my first club duplicate in partnership with Joe Mela. Having tortured Joe with constant system changes for 18 months (I don't think we ever used the same convention card twice!), the time came for me to move up to the under-25s.

Unsurprisingly, he decided to remain in the under-20s, but he must have forgiven me at some point - last year, we revived our partnership to come second in the U25 pairs, playing a simple system that I didn't attempt to modify during the event!

A year ago, I moved to the Manchester area. I spend too much time at Manchester Bridge Club, where I teach and play rubber bridge, but it seems to have had a positive affect on my game - along with winning the trials with Alex in October, the other highlight of my bridge career to date was winning the strong teams event at the Manchester Congress in January, in partnership with David Collier.

My international debut was in the Junior Whitehouse Tournament in Amsterdam two years ago, where, despite playing with Greg Moss, I avoided receiving any time penalties; but this is my first appearance in the Junior Camrose.