When bridge moved from actual tables to virtual tables last March, it quickly became clear that cheating was ruining the online game. Boye Brogeland, who was instrumental in exposing the 2015 cheating scandal, became involved in combatting this potentially fatal flaw of Covid bridge in June last year. He became part of the Credentials Advisory Team (CAT), which conducted exhaustive checks of players’ past hands and stats and recommended who should be invited to play in the Alt and OCBL online events. As in 2015, he was greatly assisted by Thomas Charlsen, who had the idea of making an umbrella organisation that would license players who wanted to play in major online tournaments, launching the World Bridge Tour this month.

The first major event was a top-16 invitational tournament, held over the Christmas break — featuring an impressive array of past and present talent — which was won by one of the all-time greats, Bob Hamman, in partnership with Peter Weichsel.

This stunning defensive effort from Hamman soon made the bulletins Weichsel led the ♠Q and declarer ducked when East (Bob) put his king on it.

He knew that he was looking at virtually all the defensive assets; partner couldn’t really have more than Q,J of Spades and perhaps a Jack outside. Even so, the right shift is not obvious, but for someone who’s been playing magical bridge for more than 60 years this was no trouble at all — and the Jack of Diamonds was soon on the table. This was the killer card; South could set up the Clubs, but he could no longer force an entry to dummy in the Diamond suit. With a total lockdown of the table, Declarer finished two down.