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A Lighter Look.    

“Memories”.

 For many years, our National Congress featured an “Even Homer Nods” award where an award was made at the end of Congress for the top player who made a bit of a fool of him/herself at the bridge table. We used to have several nominations each Congress and some hefty debate as to whom the winner should be.

Either our top players have become that much better in more recent years or else less forthcoming about what happened. (We will excuse the lack of nominations in 2020!) As an example of what used to happen, this recent happening would probably have been worthy of a nomination.

Our declarer was in 2NT having very firmly and swiftly turned down his partner’s invitation to game. 

 

 

West led a low spade but the spade attack ceased after two rounds. However, South was not impressed with the switch to the 5 by East, which went to their 6 and West’s 9.

So, South had a little think that it might just be a good idea to duck one round of clubs so that if the diamond finesse lost, as it always does at such a critical moment, that the defence might not be able to communicate in clubs. (Now, there was some element of truth to this on the actual deal. If you are interested, check out the diamond pips.) However, our expert had made rather a bad little miscalculation. 5 spade losers and the club duck put an end to their chances of making 2NT! “One down” said DealMaster Pro  and one down was the table result but there was just a little “egg” on declarer’s face…. which brings us back to our question from yesterday:

 

 

Look at the above bidding sequence and the East-West hands. The final contract was defeated by four tricks, doubled -800 but East was soon very happy. Why?

“Even Homer Nods” was the brainchild of the Congress Bulletin Editor of many years, Alan Taylor. Back in 2012, he reported this one.

           

     

                             The “Doh” Boys

“In the final of the New Zealand Pairs, there are, of course, our finest exponents. Their every intellectual and technical skill is functioning at the highest level. Consider this example:

 

 

Deal Master Pro has North-South making 2 and East-West being able to make 7 tricks in clubs, diamonds or no trumps.

East opened 1NT. South overcalled 2 for the majors after which North chose 2 which went round to West who doubled. North redoubled to encourage his partner to compete further and East tried 3. 3 from South went back to East who tried again with 4. North doubled this and also East’s 4 which followed.

The sun set on East-West -800.

Two questions:

1. Why was East smiling shortly thereafter?

2. Why are there 4 Homer busts heading this article?

Before answering those, let me introduce the dramatis personae. Their current masterpoint totals (that is updated to 2021) are shown next to the names. Just imagine the intellectual and mnemonic skills required to amass that lot…and they were concentrating!

The total of A and B points of the 4 players is 26,701. We did not think adding in C Points was necessary to make the point! We can only surmise what the total would have been if Michael Ware had been involved!

So, it was a little embarrassing when they realised that it was a whole 15 minutes since they had last played the board. Yes, this was board 18 revisited rather than board 20 which should have been in play. Let me
introduce the "doh boys":
                   Grant Jarvis                                9,214        

                   Tom Jacob                                  4,834       

                  Ken Yule                                     4,393       

               Patrick Carter                                8,260       

So, please make sure you let us know if a luminary in our bridge world has what can only be described as a “senior moment”. Come on, reading this must make you feel just a little bit better?

The psychological side of the game

 

 

Your opponents were playing 2 over 1 Game Force style, 5 card majors. Hence, they were in game force from the natural 2 onwards. 3 showed three hearts and a strong hand and 3 was first or second round control in that suit. Key Card did the rest with 5 showing one or four.

 

You lead 10 with dummy’s queen scoring. Declarer plays 4 to 3, their own king and your ace. What now?

 

Richard Solomon

 

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