Mark Horton and Sabine Auken are currently working on a new book, ‘May the Best Woman Win’.
The World’s leading bridge publishing house, Canada’s Master Point Press, have kindly given us permission to reproduce an extract.

The next deal turned out to be a clear candidate for inclusion in the next edition of Larry Cohen’s ‘To bid or not to bid – The Law of total tricks’. Larry, if you only had been there, your heart would have jumped with excitement over this new prove of your theory. Never mind that it caused Daniela a lot of hard mental work to master this difficult task.

Board 4. Dealer West. All Vul.
	ª 8 4 © K 8 6 ¨ 7 6 3 2 § A 6 3 2
ª Q J 9 5 3 © Q 4 3 ¨ K J 10 9 § 4		ª K 7 6 © 10 5 ¨ Q 5 4 § K Q 10 8 7
	ª A 10 2 © A J 9 7 2 ¨ A 8 § J 9 5

West	North	East	South
Andrea	Cronier	Pony	Willard
Pass	Pass	Pass	1©
1ª	2©	2ª	All Pass

In the closed room the bidding died at two spades. After a heart lead to the ace the defenders had lots of time to arrange their diamond ruff, so the contract had to go one down for 100 points to France.

West	North	East	South
Bessis	Sabine	d'Ovidio	Dany
Pass	Pass	Pass	1©
1ª	Dble	2ª	Dble
Pass	2NT	Pass	3©
All Pass

In our strong club system had a maximum hand for opening One Heart, which she expressed by doubling Two Spades. My 2NT asked for further description and we landed in our eight-card fit. Maybe mentally on page 48 of Larry’s book where it clearly says in a little framed box that cannot be missed: ‘Never outbid the opponents on the three level with sixteen trumps’ the French declined to bid anymore leaving Daniela with the challenge of finding a way to bring home Three Hearts. Which is exactly what she did in spectacular fashion.

The opening lead was the four of clubs. Correctly diagnosing it as a singleton Daniela rose with dummy’s ace, even though it would have been superior to duck the first trick in case East had better diamond intermediates or two spade honours all of which would guarantee an entry before Daniela could arrange her spade ruff in dummy and which would allow the defenders to promote the queen of trumps as a trick. But from then on everything was flawless and brilliant. Next followed a spade to the ten to keep East off lead and for the same reason Daniela also ducked the jack of diamonds continuation. After Daniela had won the next diamond with the ace she started to do some counting. West’s distribution appeared to be 5-3-4-1 and East’s 3-2-3-5. It seemed likely that East had one spade and one diamond honour in addition to the club king-queen. Might Catherine not have bid more strongly if she also had the heart queen? If this analysis was correct, there was only one chance left for the contract. Daniela took a deep breath and played the jack of hearts out of her hand, passing it when Veronique played low. When it held she could now ruff her spade loser in dummy and return to hand with a diamond ruff to finish drawing trumps for a breathless +140 and 1 IMP to Germany where it could easily have been 5 IMPs for France instead. So thanks to Daniela’s razor sharp analysis the LAW prevailed: ‘The Total Number of Tricks on any deal is equal to the Total Number of Trumps.’

Larry, I think you owe us a drink.

Or do we owe you one?

Locating a missing queen is always a very rewarding experience and is often considered the domain of real experts. Most experts hate guessing and go out of their way to collect as many clues as possible to give them better than 50/50 odds when they have to make the final decision. For situations where they cannot avoid a guess they often have their own private rules. Some of my favourites are from the legendary Barry Crane, arguably the greatest matchpoint player of all times. When he had a two-way finesse for the queen in a situation of e.g. AJx facing K10x his rule was ‘The queen is always over the jack in the minors. In the majors it is always over the ten.” Silly? Maybe, but sticking to rules like that in situations where it is simply impossible to dig up any clues as to the winning decision has an incredibly relaxing effect. It not only saves you from wasting brainpower on insoluble problems and spares you the agony of having to make a guess, but it also ensures that you consistently do the same thing in comparable situations, which is highly recommended. When he was missing four to the queen Barry also had another rule, which takes your own distribution into account. If you hold one singleton in your combined hands, then play for the key suit to break 3-1 as well. If you hold two singletons they even out and the key suit will break even, play for the drop. Why not?

The best known rule for what to do when trying to find a queen is already taught to beginners: ‘Eight ever, nine never’ meaning with eight cards of the suit in your combined hands you should always finesse and with nine you should never finesse. So obviously this means with even fewer cards than eight in your combined hands you should also finesse. If you don’t find this obvious you should probably be returning this book to where it came from and get something else instead. But first read on for a little while and find out why it is so enjoyable to break the rules once in a while.

Dealer East. EW Vul.
	ª A K 5 4 © 10 8 5 3 ¨ 9 3 § Q J 2
ª J 10 8 6 3 2 © Q 9 ¨ Q 7 § A 7 5		ª Q 9 7 © A K 4 2 ¨ 10 6 5 2 § 8 6
	ª - © J 7 6 ¨ A K J 8 4 § K 10 9 4 3

West	North	East	South
Zhang	Sabine	Gu	Dany
		Pass	1¨
Pass	1©	Pass	3§
Pass	3NT	All Pass

The setting is the quarterfinal against China at the Team Olympiad 2000 in Maastricht, Netherlands. The organisers had decided to put the third segment of our match on VuGraph. Going into the set we were leading China by 30 IMPs, but by the time the above deal came up our lead had shrunk to 9 IMPs. My One Heart response to Daniela’s One Diamond opening was an artificial relay promising at least game invitational values and didn’t necessarily have anything to do with hearts. So against 3NT Gu started with the heart ace and continued with a low heart to Zhang’s queen.

I won the jack of spades continuation and advanced the club queen, which was taken by Zhang’s ace. She persisted with another spade, which I again won to cash one high diamond and then two more rounds of clubs ending in my hand to collect as much information as possible before making the key decision in the diamond suit. Gu parted with her remaining low heart on the third round of clubs; on the two rounds of spades she had contributed the seven and the nine. She had played all her cards in natural fashion, which convinced me that her distribution was 3-4-4-2 with the spade queen and heart ace-king in high cards for sure.

I was beginning to feel an itch; it was suspiciously starting to look as if the diamond queen was doubleton offside. With the diamond queen in addition to her other high cards might not Gu have opened the bidding? Our opponents were playing Precision and Precision players tend to open most 11 point hands.

This was delicate; somehow playing on VuGraph always adds some extra spice to a situation like that. What would the commentators say if I went for the big play of trying to drop the doubleton queen offside and it turned out to be wrong? What would the spectators think? Surely they would all say I was playing for the gallery. For some reason it seems to be so much easier to have the courage of your convictions when no one is watching. Sort of like the golfer that never can hit a drive at the first tee by the clubhouse where everyone is watching. In theory we all know that thoughts like that do absolutely nothing to help you find the winning line of play, but believe me they are difficult to block out of your head. It was time to make a decision; I was rechecking my analysis, but couldn’t convince myself that it was wrong. So a diamond to the king it was dropping the queen for the ninth trick and the contract. The next day I ran across Paul Marston from Australia right outside the MECC (the convention centre where the championships were taking place). ‘Nice play in the diamond suit, Sabine’, he waved from the distance. I was beaming (my usual reaction when someone makes me a compliment), but I couldn’t help wondering what he would have said if that diamond queen had been onside.

Numerous ploys have been developed to try and find a missing queen and stories of players famed for never misguessing a queen have acquired cult status. Legend tells of a player that privileged by nature with his body height would always know where to find a queen. Once an opponent tried to trap him by hiding the queen of a key suit behind another card and then nonchalantly holding his hand so that declarer could very easily see his cards. Declarer promptly finessed him for the queen. The player almost exploded and burst out: ‘How could you possibly get this right? There is no way you could have seen the queen in my hand!’ ‘No’, declarer smiled ‘but you were going out of your way of showing me your cards.’

Some of those ploys have even received their own name, like the Alcatraz Coup. As the name already implies just like peeking in other players’ cards the Alcatraz Coup is not exactly on the legal side. Imagine a holding of AJ10 in dummy and K32 in your hand. You call the jack from dummy and when RHO plays low you discard a side suit from your hand. LHO will now either follow with a small card or attempt to win the trick with the queen. When he has played his card you correct your revoke knowing whether to play the king or a small card from your hand now. I recall being told that the original Alcatraz Coup actually comes from Rubber Bridge. A player with something like AJ109 opposite K432 in the trump suit would claim 100 points for honours and watch his opponents’ reaction. Surely the one with the queen would start protesting!

Before you are going to call the cops on me let’s get back to some more legitimate methods. How about squeezing your opponents a little to force them to tell you where the queen is. All it requires is a little bit of pressure and some patience.

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

West	North	East	South
Dany	Berkowitz	Sabine	Sanders
Pass	Pass	1§*	Pass
1ª	Pass	2©	Pass
2ª	Pass	2NT	Pass
3NT	All Pass

*16+HCP

I am taking you to the Olympic Museum in Lausanne, Switzerland, the setting of the second IOC Grand Prix in 1999. With President José Damiani in front the World Bridge Federation (WBF) has for many years now worked very hard for bridge to gain access into the Olympic world. The first success was scored in 1995 when the IOC awarded the WBF the status of a ‘Recognized Sport Organization’. Pursuing the goal of bridge gaining entry into the Winter Olympic Games the WBF started organizing the International Olympic Committee Grand Prix, which for the first time took place in 1998 at the Olympic Museum in Lausanne presided over by Juan Antonio Samaranch, then President of the IOC. It was at the opening ceremony of that event that President Samaranch spoke his famous words: ‘Bridge is a sport and, as such, its place is here ªin the Olympic Museum© like all other sports.’ It was a great moment.

Participating at the first edition of this event were the Open Teams of all the countries that had been victorious at the Bridge Team Olympiad throughout the existence of the WBF: France, Italy, Brazil, Poland and USA supplemented by China as representative of the Asian zone. With the event being a big success and as it seems to be men’s wont when given enough time realizing they cannot really thrive without women, there also was to be a women’s competition at the second edition of the IOC Grand Prix and this is where we are now.

The format for the women’s competition was different from the open competition. There were two teams, one from Europe and from North America. Daniela and I had the honour of representing Europe at this memorable event together with Veronique Bessis-Catherine d’Ovidio from France, Pat Davies-Nicola Smith from England and Maria Erhart-Sylvia Terraneo from Austria.

You have probably already peeked at the hand above and discovered another doubleton queen offside in a seven-card fit. We haven’t reached the stage of wizardry yet, that comes later in this chapter. On this hand the play simply developed in such a fashion that anybody that can count to thirteen would have dropped the doubleton heart queen offside, almost foolproof. A few more hands like that and you may feel tempted to get your old school abacus from the attic. Are you ready?

Carol Sanders started with a low diamond to Lisa Berkowitz’ queen and my ace. The spade finesse lost to the queen and back came the diamond ten, which I ducked. Now Lisa switched to the club king and when that was ducked as well continued with the club queen. It was time to win some tricks, so I took my ace now, repeated the spade finesse, cashed the spade ace and exited with a spade. Carol had no more clubs left and got off lead with a diamond to dummy’s king, Lisa already having discarded two clubs on the play of the spades was beginning to feel uncomfortable and parted with a heart. The hand was an open book now, the situation before the play of dummy’s last spade being:

	ª - © 10 6 4 ¨ - § J
ª 7 © 8 7 ¨ - § 9		ª - © A K J ¨ - § 3
	ª - © Q 2 ¨ J 7 § -

Lisa had to keep the winning club and accordingly pitched another heart, but as North was marked with a 2-4-2-5- and South with a 4-2-5-2-distribution I now knew there was no need to take the heart finesse. No matter who had it, it would come tumbling down under the king. Easy, isn’t it?

In all the above deals the missing queen could be located by simple counting and logical deduction. The real beauty comes when another element is involved, an ability that often is described as the mark of a true natural card player, table presence. Having good table presence is a most powerful and very feared weapon, the slightest itch, the blink of an eye, a minimal change in posture can give away the lie of the cards to a player with great table presence One claim to fame of another American legend, John Crawford, was that he would never misguess a queen. One day a friend was betting him 100 dollars that he would not be able to tell which defender held the trump queen on a hand he would prepare. Never one to refuse a bet Crawford accepted. When everything was set and he came to the table he looked at both defenders in turn and exclaimed in total astonishment: ‘I don’t believe this! Neither one of them looks like he has got the queen!’ His friend handed him a hundred-dollar bill in disbelief; he had removed the trump queen from the deck.

Time to enter this world of magic, this world of plays that cannot be explained by pure logic alone. Your heart has to be at it, your antennas have to be out. You have to be able to look into people’s heads, understand human reaction; otherwise you will never be able to even come close to performing a play like the ones I am going to show you now.

Dealer South. Both Vul.
	ª Q 6 © A J 10 5 2 ¨ Q § A J 9 6 3
ª K 3 © 4 ¨ J 8 7 6 5 4 3 § Q 4 2		ª A 10 8 7 5 4 © Q 7 6 ¨ 9 § 10 8 7
	ª J 9 2 © K 9 8 3 ¨ A K 10 2 § K 5

West	North	East	South
Ivanova	Sabine	Halatcheva	Dany

I don’t remember, but it finished in Six Hearts with Daniela being the declarer.

You will not find this deal anywhere on the internet. As a matter of fact, unless you are in the habit of collecting souvenirs, you will not find it anywhere. I found it during my Easter holiday on the attic of my parents’ house in bulletin no. 15 from the European Teams Championships in Turku, Finland in 1989.

The deal occurred towards the end of the Championships in our match against Bulgaria. Back in those days the Bulgarian girls were the toast of town. Deleva-Lorer had won the European Ladies Pairs Championships in Brighton in 1987 and they grabbed the bronze in Turku. In 1988 at the Team Olympiad in Venice the Bulgarian squad had scored a Cinderella victory in the quarterfinals against the highly fancied team from the United States. Bridge players’ hearts everywhere were beating for them to do well. Germany on the other hand had not really distinguished themselves anywhere yet. But all of a sudden at this tournament, out of nowhere, we had reached the top and playing steadily for more than a week already we were a cinch to grasp one of the two qualifying spots for the Venice Cup in Perth, Australia, later that year. Nobody could have been more surprised than we were ourselves. For all those reasons the match between Bulgaria and Germany was shown on VuGraph.
I don’t remember the bidding on the above deal, but somehow Dany and I must have had some kind of a misunderstanding, because we reached an ambitious Six Heart contract. Not only were we off the first two spade tricks, but there also was a little hole in the trump suit. Ivanova found the sneaky lead of the three of spades, low from king doubleton. Halatcheva won with the ace and took her time considering what to return finally hitting upon the nine of diamonds. Ivanova who had anxiously been awaiting her partner’s continuation almost collapsed in her chair at the sight of the Diamond Nine. This did not go unnoticed by Daniela, who was sitting on the same side of the screen with Ivanova.
But what did this reaction mean?
Daniela reasoned as follows: Clearly West had led a spade away from the king and was hoping to beat the contract by taking two spade tricks after her partner had won the first trick with the ace. When East did not continue with a second round of spades all hopes of another trick in that suit had vanished and apparently also all hopes West had of beating the contract. Ergo she could not possibly be looking at the trump queen, because otherwise she would still be very tense hoping to score a trump trick. I always think having the courage of your convictions is quite heroic, especially when playing on VuGraph. Daniela had no qualms, she cashed the heart ace and finessed East for the queen on the next round, 12 tricks.
Wow!

Once up in the attic I rummaged aaround a bit more. It was a real trip down memory lane, which brought out more than a sentimental tear or two. Amazing what the sight of a 35-year old rocking horse can do to you. Then I found a deal that dates back even earlier than the last one, the European Championships in Brighton in1987.

Dealer West. All Vul.
	ª A 8 © 5 4 ¨ A K J 9 6 5 2 § A 2
ª Q 7 6 5 2 © Q 10 9 6 2 ¨ 7 § 8 3		ª 9 4 3 © A J 7 ¨ Q 4 3 § K J 10 7
	ª K J 10 © K 8 3 ¨ 10 8 § Q 9 6 5 4

West	North	East	South
Smith	Dany	Davies	Sabine
Pass	2§	Pass	3§
Pass	3¨*	Pass	3NT
All Pass

*Acol Two in diamonds (we were not playing our strong club system yet!)

Brighton was the very first time that Daniela and I represented Germany on the National Women’s team. I still remember we shared a room at this tiny family hotel, where in order to get into the bathroom I had to climb over Daniela’s side of the bed. There simply wasn’t enough space to walk around it. In Brighton I also learned that a steak can be cooked in more than one way: rare, medium and well done with all sorts of graduations. And I found out that avocado with shrimps is a very delicious appetizer. This will probably give you the idea.

The above deal occurred in our match against Great Britain. Playing against the home country and their star pair of Nicola Smith and Pat Davies the organizers had put us in the pit in the open room. Pits were commonplace in the days before VuGraph. The playing table is put into sort of a little arena with elevated chairs surrounding it to give room to as many spectators as possible. On this occasion the pit was packed with spectators rooting for their home country, it was almost frightening.

Nicola Smith led the six of hearts against 3NT, fourth best from her longest and strongest. I followed low from dummy and there it was, this fraction of a hesitation that maybe only lasted a nanosecond. I doubt any of the kibitzers noticed anything. Our captain Peter Spletstösser, who because it was so crowded was sitting so close behind me that I could feel his breath in my neck, said he hardly noticed anything. But to me it was like a light breeze from the sea that woke me up. When it had passed Pat Davies played the jack of hearts and I was marvelling at what just happened. Suddenly it became crystal clear. Of course! She must have been thinking of playing the ace instead, but correctly inserted the jack realizing that it was important to keep communications with her partner open. If my analysis was correct, she surely was also looking at the guarded diamond queen. Otherwise she could see nine likely tricks for me and would rather try for five heart tricks playing partner to have led from king fifth. In that case I could only make my contract if I ducked the heart jack, because I would have to lose the lead in diamonds and the defenders’ communication would be open to cash four heart tricks. So I ducked. When Pat continued with the ace of hearts and another heart the contract was safe. I knew the diamond queen was offside, but it didn’t matter. I simply finessed losing to the queen, but the defenders couldn’t reach the West hand to cash their heart tricks and could do nothing to prevent me from scoring ten tricks. I was so proud.

One of the finest pieces of table presence involving finding a critical queen that I have ever seen occurred at the Team Olympiad 2000 in Maastricht. Italy was playing Poland in the final and the maestro Lorenzo Lauria was at the helm.

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

Lauria - Versace bid to the normal 3NT against Jassem – Tuszynski, against which Tuszynski led his fourth-best heart. Jassem won with the ace and returned the five, his partner contributing the seven to this trick with the air of a man who had led from only a four-card suit. But Lauria knows his customers, he was more inclined to believe the heart five to be a true card. So instead of staking everything on a 4-4 heart break, when there would be time to establish a diamond trick, he started reeling off his club tricks, cashing the spade ace in the process; both opponents discarded two diamonds. When he then asked for the spade nine from dummy, Jassem followed low and time stood still. The longer he was thinking the more convinced the VuGraph commentators became that he actually would go for the big play of dropping the spade queen offside. But nobody could come up with any convincing argument what could possibly have made Lauria seriously consider this huge play. Finally he had made up his mind, up went the king and down came the queen, +400 to Italy.

Eric Kokish has long been one of the main contributors to the official World Championship books and he was also the one reporting on the Final between Italy and Poland in Maastricht. From the occasions where I have been involved myself I know that Eric is tireless in trying to get to the bottom of any hand and finding out what a player’s motive was for a particular bid or play. But he doesn’t just speculate, he actually corresponds per email with all the players involved in a match making sure he has all the facts right and that he does everyone justice. As a result his contributions to the World Championship books are always wonderful tales with correct facts that have come to live by the players’ own thoughts and comments.

Eric, how many hours has your day?

Of course the above deal merited further investigation by Eric. This is what Lauria says in the World Championship book regarding how he found the winning line of play:

‘When I played the fourth club, West did not discard in tempo in a situation where everything should be clear, so I had something to think about and with queen fourth, he would have made up his mind already whether to discard a spade or a second diamond, so in my mind he could not have the spade queen.’

The next time you run across Lauria take a closer look. Doesn’t he resemble Al Pacino in the movie ‘Scent of a Woman’ playing the blind retired Lt. Colonel Frank Slade who has the amazing ability of tracing women by his enhanced sense of smell?

You can order a copy of the book in advance from Mark Horton in the Daily Bulletin at the special prepublication price of Euro 20, post free to anywhere in the world.