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“The other side of the coin”: A Piece of Good Fortune?

A new award is born.

   

Do you ever moan about your bad luck? Like maybe when your brilliantly bid small slam on a combined 21 hcp goes down when a side suit breaks 7-0 and you suffer a first round ruff at trick 1? The declarer may smile ruefully as he was about to claim!

We tend to forget the other side of the coin when “Lady Luck” sits on your shoulder.

Recent Winners

Firstly, though, congratulations to Kaitaia’s Bruce Thom and Sandy Joe who won Paihia’s New World Open Pairs and also to Neill Ruddell and Tania Brown who won the Open 8B Pairs and Pat Reed and Pamela Barton who won the Intermediate Pairs at Dargaville. Pat and Pamela won by about 11% with an above 60% average though Neill and Tania’s 68.67% was the round of the day. Another large score, 66.48%, in the first round of Paihia’s Twin Salver Open Pairs, was enough for Patsy and Lee Walters to win this event by about 5%.

In other news, Sue Brown has not only been elected to the Auckland Northland Regional Committee but has become its Chairperson. Congratulations, Sue, who will certainly ensure that Northland is well represented on the Regional Committee. It was also nice to see Neil Hearn and Sue Jensen from Dargaville attend the recent National Bridge Teachers’ Conference in Pukekohe. Hopefully, they can bring new ideas to the teaching of bridge and retention of bridge players in the town.

Who Needs Good Luck?  You!

Back, though, to good and bad luck.

Where would you like to play the following East-West cards:

 

If the opponents were kind enough not to lead a club, you would not mind having a shot at 6. Ruff that losing spade in the East hand after forcing out the A and all should be well.

Oh, they will lead a club? Well, be boring and play 4. You will at least outscore those in 3NT who get a club lead.

On other leads, 3NT looks good for 11 tricks.

Anyone, though, for 6NT? What do they lead? Why with East declarer, it is none other than the K. Surveying the scene, declarer could not count anywhere remotely near 12 tricks without losing a trick to the A. So, the A took trick 1 and declarer looked for an early death (the contract, that is!) by playing a diamond to the queen and North’s ace.

Yet, North returned a lowish spade! Wake up, East. You are very much alive!

 

East won and cashed a second spade but no queen appeared. So, next came 6 rounds of hearts which with one heart to be played left the following cards remaining:

 

North had no good discard when the 4 came next and the truly horrible 6NT had made for a fine score for the declarer.

Thanks to Bill Humphrey who reckoned he used up a fair amount of good fortune on this one deal which demonstrates you should never ever give up. Bill reckoned he should have rushed out to buy a Lotto ticket straight after this deal though it does not appear that this deal netted Bill a share in the 30,000 million Powerball. If it did, Bill is not saying!

Thanks for sharing this, Bill, who suggests we have a new award.. “The Fluke Award”. Any other nominations or are you just one of those millions of players who never has good fortune?

Richard Solomon

Send your “Fluke” nominations here. Click here.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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