Dubious Logic

Felixstowe Congress

As promised last week, the full results for the twenty fifth Felixstowe Congress follow. A glance at the championship pairs results, with the sharp fall in percentages from first to third, is enough to see that everyone except for the winners, Paddy Shannahan and Doc Lacey found the deals very difficult indeed. One of the many I found hard going was this (and it pains me to have show the whole diagram):

South led the queen of clubs, declarer won the ace, pitching a heart, and advanced the queen of spades and as North I got to thinking…

Sure, I'd seen that old ruse before – even once got it to work myself – the queen entices a cover from Kx and crashes the honours. Oddly enough, when it worked for me, second hand played the ace – not the king. But here, I was thinking, South surely had a singleton heart but hadn't led it. Could partner be out of hearts originally? That would give West a 5=6=2=0 shape. Well that's the sort of thing people sometimes do.

Well I expect you can guess what happened next. After the deafening crash, East went back to dummy with a trump and produced another good card, the nine of hearts, neatly pinning my partner's eight. In fact, my playing the ace of spades on the first round lost two tricks, East needed two entries for the heart plays and had had to squander one for the spade play. I would have liked to credit declarer here but she was unknown to me – still, I think I'll recognise her if our paths cross again…

Published Saturday 15.Oct.2005