A game of two rooms
There are many stories from matches where the teams scoring up produce strange results that either cancel each other out – a 'push' in the trade – or net to only a token difference. These serve as a reminder never to second guess the other room. Even if you have a bad board, there's no reason why should team-mates shouldn't have a good one. Perhaps tame by comparison to some such tales, this was one recent example from the Business Houses League,
Dealer East
- AJ4
- 973
- J94
- A954
- K76
- K54
- AKQ103
- 103
- 983
- 10862
- 65
- Q762
- Q1052
- AQJ
- 872
- KJ8
Table 1
North-South were playing the weak no-trump and had a mechanism for escaping from trouble when it was doubled, not one for penalising the opponents. Still, things didn't look so bad even after West had started with his diamonds. On lead to trick six, West must have known the game was up. With ten HCP in dummy, partner could have next to nothing of use. In fact though East had signalled nothing in hearts West played one anyway. That enabled South to take the rest of the tricks without risk, +380 to North-South.
Table 2
At table two North-South were playing a five card major system where, effectively, their choice of minor opening on balanced hands reflected their lengths in the major – thus here, the opening bid showed three or four spades. West's overcall was sensible and paid little heed to his opponents artificiality. East-West did play an escape mechanism and East thought it a good time to employ it. West knew he was unlikely to get to declare diamonds so accepted the heightened stakes.
And it was nearly successful. North led a top heart and South missed his way at the first trick, deciding to duck instead of winning. Had he taken the ace and switched to a top spade, the defence could have taken the first eight tricks. As it was they had to discard carefully to score the remainder for one down and +400. Though they missed out on a possible +1000 as described above, its perhaps not easy to see that a different lead from North might have netted +1600. Had he started with a club, North-South can arrange to take the first seven tricks forcing two discards from West. In order to keep the heart king guarded, he must part with a diamond winner. South can then exit with a diamond and collect both the ace and queen of hearts at the end. At least East-West from the other room were pleased to see their –380 converted into a 1 IMP gain.
Published Saturday 31.Mar.2001