Steve Becker, King Features Syndicate

There were a handful of members at the club who stoutly maintained that Sylvia was the worst player they had ever seen. Of course, most of them realized that this harsh judgment was colored by their own bitter experiences as her partner. Even so, it was fashionable to refer to Sylvia in this derogatory manner.

Despite her reputation, Sylvia did have her moments of sublime glory. Consider this deal where she was West and led the queen of spades against three no-trump. She was playing with a partner who had beseeched her on numerous occasions, as had so many others, to conserve her high cards during the play.

It was largely for this reason, after declarer had won the spade lead with the king and led the king of clubs followed by the jack, that Sylvia obediently played her 10 on the jack! The purpose in doing this was to conserve her highest card in clubs, the queen!

Declarer had planned to follow low from dummy had Sylvia played the queen, or had she shown out of clubs, since he could assure scoring at least 10 tricks by retaining dummy's ace.

But when Sylvia produced the 10, declarer could not conceive that Sylvia would have the Q-10-x and fail to cover the jack. Accordingly, he went up with the ace, expecting to catch East's queen.

After East showed out on the ace of clubs, declarer, to his utter dismay, finished down two, and Sylvia added still another scalp to her extensive collection.