The Disaster Corner

Murat Molva (Turkey)

This prize-winning effort was received by email, showing once again how important the efforts of the EBL in this direction are.

What should happen at the table for a hand to be qualified as a disaster? How about this:

Netherlands vs Belgium Round 5. Board 5. Dealer North. N/S Vul
	ª 3 © J 7 3 2 ¨ K Q 5 2 § 9 5 4 2
ª A Q 8 6 5 © A 8 6 ¨ J § K Q J 6		ª 9 © K 9 ¨ A 10 8 7 6 4 § A 10 7 3
	ª K J 10 7 4 2 © Q 10 5 4 ¨ 9 3 § 8

The Belgian West's decision to make a negative double instead of going for a juicy penalty at the right vulnerability situation was the beginning of the disaster.

Now, perhaps realizing the missed opportunity, West decided to recover by going for slam. Five Spades was alerted, but explained on paper in a language that only the players were able to understand. Maybe it was a manoeuvre to try and stop at 5NT? East bid 6¨ and the declarer only discovered the club fit when he saw the dummy.

Declarer took the spade lead with the queen and advanced the jack of diamonds. Now, the Dutch North, Lagas, made a fine play by ducking this! Now the slam was unmakable and declarer wound up down one.

First, missing a sure +1100; then bypassing the game level; then reaching a slam that could make if a defender slips but doesn't; and finally finding out that your teammates have defeated Six Clubs at the other table. If this isn't a disaster I don’t know what is!

Editor’s note; it is even worse than that, as Six Diamonds cannot be defeated. Say South leads a club. Declarer wins in dummy and advances the jack of diamonds. North ducks. But now declarer has several winning lines. One is to play three rounds of hearts, ruffing the last one and play the ten of diamonds from hand. North cannot avoid the impending trump coup. Mind you this would be quite an achievement at the table!.

Worst defense of the championship

Niek Brink - Netherlands

We all think we are good bridge players but sometimes something goes really wrong. You can see it in some big scores (-2000) and for sure something went wrong then. But if you see +90 it looks like a boring board, especially if I tell you that nothing went really wrong in the bidding. However, I produced probably the worst defence of the tournament. It happened in Round 6.

Board 14. Dealer East. None Vul
	ª 7 6 5 2 © 9 7 ¨ A K 9 4 § 9 7 4
ª K J 10 9 8 © 3 2 ¨ 6 2 § K J 8 3		ª Q © A Q 6 5 ¨ Q J 8 5 3 § 10 5 2
	ª A 4 3 © K J 10 8 4 ¨ 10 7 § A Q 6

1ª was not forcing showing a 5 card suit, and for some reason East decided to play in 2¨ instead of 1NT.

The lead was a small spade away from the ace (!) for the bare queen of declarer, who now played a small heart out of his hand for North´s seven. North played back a spade to give his partner a ruff (!) not realising that East would like to play in spades instead of diamonds with ªAQ4. Declarer played a heart on the spade and south ducked (!). Declarer now played a heart to the ace and ruffed a heart with the six of diamonds, over ruffed by north with the nine. If North now plays back a spade the contract can still be beaten because of a trump promotion, but North now played a club to South’s ace. For the second time someone could beat the contract by playing back the ace of spades, but South immediately returned a small club, hoping declarer would take the king. Declarer finessed the jack, and played a diamond for the ace. Now the contract could not be beaten anymore, and the defence finished with three diamond tricks, one heart trick and the ace of clubs. For those who can´t count the number of chances the defence had to beat the contract, I summarize them again. The lead was the first, then South ducked the ace of spades (2), North didn´t play back a spade after overruffing the heart (3) and then South didn´t return the ace of spades after winning the ace of clubs (4). I don´t think this is a world record, but we are probably on for the championship record.

By the way, please notice that our coach Kees Tammens is writing in the bulletin about defense. Perhaps we should read his articles….

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