Tom writes: Born in 1971, I am single and live in Maida Vale. I picked up bridge at home playing three-handed with my parents, then at Wellington College, the Reading Bridge Club and Cambridge University , where I formed a partnership with Jeffrey Allerton.

We both liked five-card majors but I favoured the weak no trump at the time and Jeffrey preferred strong so we tossed for it and he won. I've never played weak since by choice. We played on the British team in the 1994 Junior European which still ranks as my most exciting experience in bridge. We were second going into the final match against France but well behind Denmark. We bid a hand to 3NT with queen-doubleton facing jack-doubleton spade, one down. Worse, the Hackett twins (Justin & Jason) had conceded 6NT, declining to lead the spade ace. This didn't stop us winning our match handily, and our Norwegian friends had blitzed the Danes. I was stunned - we had won the gold! The same team (the others were Danny Davies, Phil Souter, captain Raymond Brock and coach Phil King) went onto Bali the next year to win the World Junior in some comfort. You can see that the 2004 England team is a partial "Class Of 1995" reunion.

I was now playing and writing about bridge professionally. Naturally drawn to the high-stake rubber bridge clubs in London , I spent most of my late-twenties at TGR's in Marble Arch, including an educational spell as the house player in the "Big Game". Various degenerates at the club introduced me to backgammon and punting on sport and horses, all of which I found of interest.

On the duplicate side I was partnering many partners of varying abilities, most successfully David Mossop (two British Premier Leagues and a Spring Fours) and David Price (two Crockfords, one Camrose trial). Price and I were invited to the last Macallan Pairs in 1999. We didn't win but we did play against Omar Sharif, the only thing non-bridge players need to know about my career. I have also won in Indonesia partnering Les Steel , Malta with Robert Sheehan and China with Phil King and Nick Sandqvist, with whom I became a Mind Sports Grandmaster to add to the EBU version. Like a few other experts the domestic trophy that eludes me is the Gold Cup.

2000 started badly. My team lost the final play-off to go to the Olympiad and Price and Mossop had formed a partnership in an entirely understandable joint bid to avoid partnering me. My bridge was getting stale and other activities were beginning to appeal more. I left for 's-Hertogenbosch, The Netherlands, to captain the English juniors. They didn't win but some good came out of it. One of the team clearly had outstanding talent and seemed to share my approach to bridge, so I suggested he partner me in the Four Stars teams at Brighton that August. David Gold and I won that event. We formed a regular partnership which we have been working on since, representing England in six Camrose matches without defeat, winning two Tollemaches, the Brighton Bowl, the IMP pairs in Marbella and coming back from 47 IMPs down in our eight extra boards as undefeated team to reach the final of the Spring Fours.  Our efforts were rewarded when we romped home in the 2003/4 team trials with John Armstrong and Danny Davies, qualifying to represent England in the European and Olympiad.

It was against Armstrong and Davies in a previous year's trials that I played the following hand:

NS Game; Dealer North
		AJ53
		None
		AQJ65
		K1074
Q10			K974
KQJ65			10984
K10983			72
6			Q85
		862
		A732
		4
		AJ932

West	North	East	South
1	Dbl	3	4
Pass	4	Pass	4
Pass	6	All Pass

David's 4 bid told me he had slam interest in clubs and heart shortage. I made a fake bid in spades to pass the buck and inhibit the lead.

West (John) led the king of hearts. I won in hand, discarding a spade, and attacked diamonds, finessing the queen and playing ace and another, ruffing. Next I ruffed a heart. My plan was to ruff three hearts in dummy. The problem was that East (Danny) had already discarded one heart on diamonds, and would throw his last heart if I ruffed another diamond. Then he would be ready to overtrump dummy with the queen of clubs. As West was known to have ten red cards, East was a strong favourite to hold that card.

My solution was to finesse it immediately. I played a club to the nine. When that held I ruffed my third heart with the ten, East following. Then I ruffed a diamond, ruffed my last heart with the king and ruffed another diamond. Four tricks remained. I took the next with the ace of spades and had the ace-jack of trumps remaining over the queen to claim my slam.