In Ian Fleming’s novel Moonraker, Bond bests a cheating Hugo Drax in a game of bridge by cheating himself, slipping a rigged deck into play that duplicated the ‘Duke of Cumberland Hand’. Bond opens 7 Clubs, Drax doubles, Bond redoubles, and makes a Grand Slam, shafting Drax for a hefty £15,000.
I’ve played a little bridge, but was never any good and I have no idea how to score, but I’ve always wondered why Drax have outbid with his hand, or would he stand to earn more if he busted Bond?
Moderator Action
Since this concerns the rules and scoring of bridge, let’s move this over to the game room.
Moving thread from General Questions to the Game Room.
D’oh!
Drax cannot make any 7 contract. An opening diamond lead by Bond will be trumped by his partner so he can’t make 7H or 7S. He can’t make 7NT because Bond can lead the AC.
His partner can make 7H or 7S because Bond can’t trump any opening lead though getting him to bid that would be tough without cheating – yes I realize they were.
It sounds like they’re playing rubber bridge since there’s a money bet. For 7H or 7S, you’d score 7*30 = 210 for the tricks and a honors bonus of 100 for holding AKQJ of trumps in one hand. In addition, you get a 1000 or 1500 point bonus for the grand slam (depending on the vulnerability). If the slam was also the second “game” win of the rubber, you’d collect 700 if you’re opponents had not won a game and 500 if they had.
So the score from just this hand would be from 1310 to 2510.
For setting Bond, Drax would receive 200 points for the first trick 300 points for all others if Bond was vulnerable or 100 points for the first trick and 200 points for each additional trick were he not.
So in summary, the best case not to bid slam is if Bond is vulnerable he’s not. Then bidding the slam by Drax’s partner gives him 1310. He’d have to set Bond five tricks for 1400 to do better than that.
I just realized you said the novel. That was written in the 1950s and bridge scoring was different then. I believe at that time it was 200 points for each vulnerable undertrick so to score more than 1310, Drax would needed to have taken 7 tricks.
It’s sort of hard to analyse according to general bridge principles - being a highly artificial hand being played by James Bond and Hugo Drax on a spaceship or some such. Opening that hand 7 clubs is in fact science fiction (they would have been playing rubber bridge for money - you play for a set amount per point scored).
It does speak to a couple of important bridge ideas, though, one of which is should you ever double a slam? Even if you’re certain that it’s going off, the text book response is to just sit for it and take your points. Taking it 2 off, say, will almost always be a good score and you avoid the risk of a truly horrible situation developing where the opps run to a better contract (maybe 6 or 7NT from a suit) that can actually make (helped by the information you just gave them about your hand). Doubling the opps in this situation will haunt you to your grave, as that’s how long you’ll be playing for to recoup your losses. [I have read expert players say they don’t agree with this, and will X a slam if they feel like it].
A related point is what you say in your post - why doesn’t Drax just bid 7NT? James Bond opens 7C in front of you, you assume he knows how to play the game and the contract has some play, so weigh in with 7NT - looks like it will go 2 off doubled, which beats the hell out of a making 7C Bond’s way. [7 hearts actually makes Drax’s way but he can’t bid that without knowing his partners hand, and I’m unclear on who is cheating who with respect to the cards].
These contrived hands are actually pretty useful tools in visualising high level decisions in bridge. Knowing when and how to compete at the 5 level over opps major suit game, say, is a big part of bridge and a very challenging area.
How does East make Seven? West has ten tops and when they’re all gone East has a long card in each major, but he can’t ruff a diamond for the thirteenth because he had to draw four rounds before cashing Drax’s AK. He can’t squeeze Bond in the minors because Bond is discarding after the dummy.
Seven Hearts minus one or two is cheaper than letting Bond make his redoubled slam though…!
Well it need a C lead from Bond obv, but then it’s just ruff 3 clubs and use spades (not diamonds!) for transportation?
Ah bridge discussion. It looks so much like English.
North uses one of the small clubs in dummy (South) to trump a major suit (spades or hearts) lead. North uses two of the small clubs in dummy to trump small diamonds, thereby getting rid of the ace and king in West’s hand. North leads a small club from dummy twice, covering whatever West plays, then plays his top club to draw West’s last club. North then plays the queen of clubs to take East’s jack, and has five good clubs to take the remaining five tricks. The exact sequence will depend on what East leads to the first trick.
Drax cheated on his deal by using a silver cigarette case as a mirror to spot the cards he was dealing. No other cheating skills were mentioned, so the implication is that’s all he had in his bag of tricks. When Bond slipped in the rigged deck, he assumed it was an honest deal to him, and had no idea what the other player’s cards were.
The bet was described as 15 and 15, with a £100 side bet per trick. Don’t know how the main bet went, but the side bet was £400 per trick with the redouble. Drax paid his partner’s losses for the total £15,000 loss.
One page I found said Drax should have gone 7S, which would have left him down only two tricks, but nothing more than that as an explanation.
Incidentally, with North as dealer, a more normal sequence of bidding would be:
North East South West
3D Pass Pass 6NT
7C Pass Pass Double
Redouble All Pass
North can be sure that West will bid over his 3 Diamonds bid – he doesn’t need to bid 7 Clubs straight away.
If I’m East on this bidding, then after North redoubles I’m bidding 7H.
If my partner can freely bid 6NT, then my club void and 5 trumps make it a fair bet.
I don’t understand this comment. We’re in the Game Room and discussing a famous hand.
Any sport or game has its vocabulary…
And think 7 hearts goes down just one – East has to trump clubs three times, and West has to trump diamonds once, leaving South with a trump trick. So 7 hearts down one doubled is the best result for East-West.
Assume the contract is 7 hearts. If it’s 7 spades just switch hearts and spades in the below.
If S leads a club, East trumps leads a spade to west, trumps a second club, leads a spade to west trumps the last club. The west hand is now good when you lead a trump back to it and draw trump.
If a heart or spade is lead, you win in west and lead clubs three times using spades to get back to West. It’s a bit safer to draw two rounds of trump first, but don’t need to on the lay of the cards.
I do see my previous scoring was wrong though. I didn’t see that Bond had redoubled.
West doesn’t need to trump any diamonds. The west hand is good except for three club losers that can be trumped. The exact play I gave in my previous post.
Yes. Excuse me while I get my copy of Bridge for the incurable putz off the shelf and revise the chapter on “Dummy Reversal”, thank you. :smack:
We’re postulating that Bond isn’t on lead (perhaps Drax and partner play “Transfers over 7C”) and any lead from South can’t hurt. On a major suit lead West wins in hand; a Club lead can be covered if you like, it’ll be ruffed by East. East ruffs three Clubs, crossing in Spades each time and then drawing trumps to leave his hand high. Seven Spades makes the exact same way.
As OldGuy says, you just trump 3 clubs with East and the West hand is high.
And just for fun:
I think the real question is, surely Drax must know he has been cheated here - there’s no way Bond could have opened 7C on such a hand without collusion or cheating of some kind (never mind redoubling). If you’re going to cheat successfully, it must work but it must be non-obvious. When Bond deliberately cheated Goldfinger out of a golf match, Goldfinger was obviously suspicious but couldn’t pin anything on him (hence, presumably, Oddjob decapitating the statue with his hat instead of aiming at Bond himself).