My wife and I play duplicate bridge at a local club once or twice a week. Yesterday two odd things happened that I don’t think will ever happened again.
With the first, with me playing in East, my partner and I had these hands:
East J 6 3 2 A K 6 Q J 9 8 7 4
West A K 9 2 9 5 Q 10 7 A 10 6 3
We reached 5 clubs, which went down one because the king of clubs was in the wrong place. However, later, when looking at the full deal, I saw that there’s a better contract. By the way, one extra piece of information that I’ll give you at this stage is that the hearts split 6-2 with the opposition, with two of those hearts being in the North with the king of clubs.
So what’s the better contract?
3 NT, which makes an over trick
If you’ve looked at that spoiler box, you might think for a while how that contract can possibly make.
The ace and king of hearts were in the North, meaning that there’s no entry in South’s hand to get to the rest of those hearts
I’ll describe the second hand in a reply to this OP.
With the second odd hand, I was declarer in 4 hearts, having bid spades along the way (hence the confusion). I was in dummy, but I wanted the lead in my hand to take a finesse. Dummy had A K 9 4 of diamonds, and I had a void, so I led the 4 intending to trump. RHO followed with the 2, and I played a low spade, thinking it was a trump. LHO must have thought it was a trump too, and played the 3 of diamonds – even though he could have won with the 5! I started to play a card from my hand, but my partner and RHO stopped me, pointing out that I’d won the trick in dummy. I think that’s the only time I’ll win a trick with the 4 on the first round of a suit.
That second one is hilarious. What a masterful play - the non-trump trump! Was it the difference between making the contract and not? Hope your opponents saw the funny side.
Makable or not, I don’t see how you’d get there in the first place.
East certainly doesn’t want it with a singleton spade and trash hearts. West would have to bid it, and he/she would be relying on very favorable card placement not to go down 3.
Out of curiosity, did any teams bid and make your proposed contract?
A fun couple of stories - Giles - have you seen the other bridge thread on this forum?
On your first hand, I don’t think it’s fair to call 3NT a “better” contract than 5C.
5C is a perfectly decent 50% game that makes if the King of Clubs is onside.
3NT is a terrible contract that will go down - maybe a lot down - without a crazy lucky block in Hearts. (I did actually work it out without the spoiler - you don’t have enough trumps for 4S or 5D, so it has to be 3NT, and the only way that can work is if the Hearts are blocked).
Bridge is a game of imperfect information and sometimes high-percentage contracts will fail while low-percentage ones succeed - but if you consistently bid 3NT rather than 5C on those sort of hands, you’ll be a big loser on balance.
On the second one - I’ve (unintentionally) pulled off something similar a few times against careless opponents by leading a lowish card towards a known void and throwing a loser rather than trumping, but noting quite as spectacular.
I’ve legitimately won the first round of a suit with a 5 (opponent led 4th best from something like KQ83 and hit his partner with the singleton 4), but never a 4.
No, in the end it made no difference. The opponents had three aces between them, and those were all the tricks they could take, if the hand was played properly.
I agree: 3NT is only a good contract if you have perfect information about all the hands, i.e., as a “double dummy” problem. It works if North has A, AK or AKQ bare, and the chances of one of those is about 3 in 256, or about 1%, which is a lot less than the 50% chance of a simple finesse. No one was in 3NT, and you would only bid it with a serious misunderstanding between the partners.
At our club, at the end of each round of play we can pick up a sheet showing not only the hands we have played, but also the results given perfect play. The sheet for this showed EW making 4NT on this hand, and it took me a while to work out what was going on. I do sometimes find it annoying with these double-dummy results being something that no one would play and make in real life, e.g., a singleton king that will drop if you play the ace instead of taking the finesse that is much better odds.
J
6 3 2
A K 6
Q J 9 8 7 4
I’ve (unintentionally) pulled off something similar a few times against careless opponents by leading a lowish card towards a known void and throwing a loser rather than trumping, but noting quite as spectacular.