Talking about cards

One of the good things about bridge is that, no matter how poor your results are, you can always pick up a good story for after-bridge. At after-bridge there is, of course, no such thing as misguessing the trump suit. Jan Lagerman, while enjoying a well deserved glass of beer, tried to tell about a hand with a scary trump guess.

Board 27. Dealer South. None Vul.
	ª 10 2 © Q J 10 9 7 3 ¨ K § A Q 8 6
ª A Q © 8 ¨ A Q 7 6 4 2 § 7 4 3 2		ª K 9 5 © K 6 4 2 ¨ J 10 9 5 3 § 10
	ª J 8 7 6 4 3 © A 5 ¨ 8 § K J 9 5

West	North	East	South
Jan Lagerman		Marten Gustawsson
			Pass
2¨	2©	5¨	Dbl
Pass	Pass	Pass

2¨ promised at least six diamonds and denied a four-card major. The lead was the queen of hearts which was ducked and followed by another heart that declarer ruffed.

“Nice contract, eleven easy tricks” said listener number one.
“Well, you have seen all 52 cards, but at the table you must guess the trump suit correctly.” replied Jan
“What trump guess?” said listener number two. “It is obvious that trumps break one-one. North would have pulled five diamonds doubled with a void.”
“But surely you might leave it in with only a six-card heart suit. You have after all overcalled two hearts.” replied Jan.
“Possibly, but the pass would not have been that swift” interrupted his partner Mårten.
“Anyway, what was your excuse for misguessing the trump suit?”
“I did not want to guess the trump suit so I decided to try to trigger the ruff a winner reflex. I played the queen of spades and overtook with the king, continued with the king of hearts which was ruffed with the eight of diamonds.”

This brought down a round of laughter.

Björn Wennerberg was eager to get into the discussion about getting the trump suit right.

Board 48. Dealer West. E/W Vul.
	ª 4 © 10 ¨ K Q J 9 8 7 § J 8 7 5 4
ª A 10 8 6 5 © 8 6 3 ¨ A 6 2 § A Q		ª K Q 3 © K J 9 5 ¨ 5 4 3 § 9 6 2
	ª J 9 7 2 © A Q 7 4 2 ¨ 10 § K 10 3

West	North	East	South
Bjorn Wenneberg		Gunnar Andersson
1ª	2NT	Pass	3§
Pass	Pass	3©*	Pass
3ª	Pass	Pass	Pass

3© showed a heart-suit and three-card support in spades. The opening bid of one spade promised only four cards. It has to be said that four-card majors are a rare sight these days.

The lead was the ten of hearts, covered by the jack and won by the queen. South switched to the ten of diamonds which Björn won with the eight. Björn now read the position correctly when he figured that the ten of diamonds was probably a singleton. Concluding that North’s original distribution might very well have been 1-1-6-5 he crossed to dummy with the king of spades and continued with a small spade to ten finessing the jack. Björn proceeded to knock out the ace of hearts and discarded the queen of clubs on the established heart trick. Well played Björn but unfortunately all in vain, not only was the king of clubs on-side, the board was cancelled!

Trump suits one might guess correctly but some things are just impossible to work out. The organizers insist that everyone must wear a badge of security reasons, which might be fair enough. But if you do want some kind of security you would not put Ralf Byström in charge of the gates would you?

Surprisingly, I had half an hour to spare and went down to watch the vugraph. North picked something like ª AXX, © AXX, ¨ KXX, § 10XXX and there is not much to be said about this hand. In the closed room the auction began 1 ¨ from your partner and your right-handed opened overcalled 1©. Unfortunately for the vugraph commentators the auction in the open room was even duller, but significantly slower, as was the rather uninteresting play of the cards. They managed to keep battle positions by discussing the various opportunities that are available after the 1© overcall. Should one attempt a takeout double, a jump to 2NT or a cuebid of 2©? It was suggested that one should employ 1ª as a conventional forcing bid. Just as Barry was going to dwell on the merits of a 1NT rebid the play finished and the next board came up on the screen. I left the room making a note of the fact that bulletin writers only has to cover the interesting boards, whereas vugraph commentators must spend most of their time on the boring boards.

Outside the vugraph room I met Johan Sylvan, P-O Sundelin and Jan Kamras. Jan was briefing the players about the Finnish system.

“Slightly modified Carrot Club I believe” said P-O.
“That is correct, they play weak twos in the majors” answered Jan.
“But there is a strong diamond opening?”

Slightly modified Carrot Club turned out to be the Magic Diamond!