Everyone over a certain age can remember the sense of shock that comes when policemen start looking like mere boys. Now I’m in my mid-forties, I get that kind of jolt quite frequently. It seems incredible to me that so many ‘authority’ figures in my life — my boss, my doctor, my lawyer, and so on — are younger than me. But never have I felt this more keenly than I did last week, when I found myself sitting opposite an extremely talented bridge player whom I’d booked to play in a duplicate game. Meet my new teacher: Tom ‘Mini’ Paske, aged 23.

Mini — so called because he has an older bridge-playing brother — is a rising star of the game. I may have been playing since he was born, but there’s no limit to what I can learn from him. I can’t pretend any column-worthy hands came up when we played, but I enjoyed this challenge he gave me from a recent league match:

West led the ♠5 to East’s ace. How do you play? The problem, of course, is how to get to dummy’s diamonds. The solution? Play your ♠K (or ♠Q) under the ♠A at trick 1. East shifts to the ♣J. Rise with the ♣A. Unblock the ace and king of diamonds, and play a low spade towards dummy. West rises with the ♣J (your ♣10 is now an entry), and switches to the ♥Q. You must allow this to win – otherwise you’ll have no entry back to hand after cashing the diamonds. There is nothing more West can do except cash his ♣K — the rest are yours. A Mini miracle.