The thrill of thinking ahead

You have:



And partner opens 1♥!



Wow‼ You were planning to fit in hearts and now partner tells you she has also spades. Question: is 2♠ a reverse ? Depends who you ask.

For partner and me, it is only showing shape. Opener might have extras, we will know later.

So now, what do you do? Do you give fit in hearts or spades? Everybody knows 4-4 fit is better, because on the 5-3 fit, the 2 extra cards will serve to discard losers for the other hand. So you go ahead and bid 3♠.



What is partner doing? She is saying she has a nice hand, but no control in clubs. As you have all suits under control, you KCB.



Now it hits you. What does hit you? Which card would you now like to know about in partner's hand? The Heart Queen. Does she have the heart Queen? If you could know that, you would be able to bid 7. But how? You have discussed about asking bids, but you are not on firm grounds in that department. If you bid now 6♥, is it an asking bid, or to play?

So, you settle for 6♠. Now let's go back for a bit and see what we could have done better.

After 2♠, you were so excited by this double fit that you lost your concentration. What did you do wrong? With spade as trumps, as we saw, you will ask keys, but how will you know if partner has the Queen of hearts? How can we find that out? Well, Eric Kokish once wrote an article about a hand where he set a false trump suit in order to collect the information he needed in another suit. I did that also once, wrote an article about it with this title: Hommage to Eric Kokish. Alas, I don't have that article anymore (I am pretty sloppy with things and quite lazy also).

So lets go back to our hands and instead of 3♠, let's bid 3♥.



As I say all the time, we tend to play too fast at bridge. I once lost a chess tournament game by playing too fast. What's so special about that, you are asking? It was a game by correspondence!

In bridge, the pleasure, the exhilaration, is not in the result, it is in the journey. So take your time: think, think and think again before making a bid or a play. Enjoy the thrill of thinking ahead, and savour the surprise of your partner when you will put her in 7♠!

My Dog Shawnee and the Queen of Diamonds

West opens 1♥, your partner passes and East also. You have:



Have you discussed with your partner balancing bids in 4th seat? No? Well, you have a lot of work to do.

Let's say you reopen with 1NT, 11-16 over a major opening, with or without a stopper (nothing's perfect). West rebids 2 ♥ and your partner doubles, negative. What is your bid?



As your range (11-16) is quite large, you have now to bid your hand to the fullest. So you jump to 3♠, showing 4 cards and a maximum. Your partner bids 4♠ and everybody passes.

West leads the heart king.



You swear silently against your partner (you will understand later why silently). Why did't she (yes, it is my wife) bid 3NT? But now is not the time for recriminations, you have to make 10 tricks.

You duck the lead and LHO plays back a small heart.

He was end played on the lead with most probably KQ of hearts, the Queen of diamonds and AQ of clubs.

He could have played back a spade, but he didn't want to squeeze his partner's trump holding (he doesn't know your spades are anaemic).

You win with your heart Jack and... pause. Count!

West has repeated his hearts, so he has 6. Spades are probably 4-2. So East has 4 spades and 2 hearts (if he has 5 spades, it will be verrrrrry difficult).

He will always make a spade trick, so why not give it to him now? But in a peculiar way!

You are not the best player of the club for nothing. My idol Julius Caesar used to say: "Better to be 1st in Ste-Adele than 2nd in Buenos Aires!"

He was not talking about bridge, but we can transpose and use those famous sentences in other circumstances, can't we?

You play a club.

West jumps with his Ace and plays back a 3rd heart, ruffed by East, killing your Ace. But that heart Ace was useless anyway.

Opponents must believe you have lost your mind (your wife and partner looks absolutely certain you are crazy), but you are not the best player of that club for nothing, I repeat! They don't know it yet, but you are in the process of counting the hand. So you sacrificed the Ace of hearts for the big picture, opponents being reduced, in your superior mind, to mere pawns in your brilliant plan of making the contract.

After his ruff, East, endplayed now, plays back a club; small, Queen and King from dummy.

How will you play the diamonds?

First you have to play the spades and clubs to obtain the count.

Small spade to your Ace, Queen of spades (West had 2, like you pictured) and a 3rd spade to dummy's King.

Then Jack of clubs, both following, and small club ruffed, West pitching a heart on the 4th club.

The hands were then:



The position is now:



The Queen of diamond is the card you have to find now.

You play against club players who open majors with 9 points and minors with 14, and who never alert! They often play 70%, but never against you! Enough with the hesitations and bad mouthing.

Where is that Queen of diamonds?

Barry Crane, the world's greatest matchpoint player (May he rest in peace. He was assassinated 2 or 3 months after calling the director against my wife. She assures me it was not her. Now I always swear silently, as you saw previously, that is why I am still alive. You live and you learn, they say. In my case, You learn and you live), so Barry Crane said the reason for his successes was called Oscar, a mythical bird that would stand on his left shoulder and tell him how the cards lie.

Well, in my case, it is not a bird, but my Airedale dog, Shawnee, who sits down on my left (not on my shoulder, she weighs 75 pounds!) and who, depending on the card I am looking for, puts her left paw on my lap (telling me the card is on my left) or her right paw (I let you conclude).

Either that, or she wants a cookie! :)

She can also push me with her nose: twice, the card is on my left; once, well... you should know by now. Either that, or she needs to go out.

All this nonsense to tell you I don't know where is the damn Queen of diamond.

I know West has 2 diamonds and East, 3. So 3 chances for the Queen to be on my right, and 2 on my left.

But these scoundrels open majors with 9 points, and weak 2's with 5 to 8, but sometimes they have 7 cards and 11 points.

No alert, ever.

I give a look to Shawnee, she looks back at me with teary eyes, then closes her eyes, opens them again, looks to the side. It is obvious she is at a complete loss: no paw, no push with the nose. These players are so unpredictable (even them sometimes, they don't know what they are doing) that she is mystified. Poor me! I am all alone. Even my dog is abandoning me.

I have been thinking for at least 2 minutes, torn between 2 lines of play.

Then I see how I will play those diamonds. A clue? It is worth what it is worth but I want those players to suffer, I want to give them false hopes and then, at the instant they will think they have me, crush them (the hopes, not the players). Did I tell you I was the best player of that club? Yes? Just in case you forgot.

So I play the 9 of diamonds from hand. Has West hesitated a bit? He follows with this microscopic slowness that looks too quick (WOW!) and you know then you got him. Ace from dummy, small from East.

Small diamond from dummy, small to your right, King from hand, QUEEN!!!

Wouf, wouf, says Shawnee!!

Man about universe (II)

In 1996, I had entitled this way an article that won the prestigious Bols Bridge Press Award (Man about universe). The year before, I had made the final with The Apple, the Law and the Principle that was also published in BBO News.

A man about universe is penetrating, profound, contrary to the man about town who is superficial. The man about universe bridge player sees through appearances, like a poet, very different from the man about town bridge player who takes the 1st finesse he can and... goes down.

The following hand was played by Nicolas L'Ecuyer in the finals of the Canadian Championships, against Eric Kokish, Number One bridge coach in the world.

Your partner opens 1♣, Kokish on your right bids 1♥ and you have:



As the finals of a National Championships are not for timid souls, you jump to 3NT and all pass.



George Mittelman, Canadian Champion and World Mixed Pairs Champion, leads the 4 of spades (attitude lead). Kokish wins the Ace and plays back the 7, showing probably 3 cards. You win the King and... you have to make the rest, the spades being established.

You have 8 sure tricks: 1 spade, 4 hearts (your heart spots are not enough to make 5 tricks), and 3 clubs. You can find the missing 9th trick in clubs if they break 3-2. Even if they split 4-1, if you find J or 10 stiff on your right, you will make 4 tricks. Do you play clubs right away? All the men about town would, and complain after, if they go down, of their bad luck.

Nicolas, like all champions, hates to go down in cold contracts and hates even more to play without thinking, without trying all he can to avoid being forced to guess. The top players never guess, they count. And if ever they guess, it is because they are forced to, the events force them to guess. At the crucial moment, when they absolutely have to guess, they then transport themselves into another dimension, the 4th dimension, reserved to really exceptional players, brilliant, men about universe.

After winning the 2nd trick with the King of spades, Nicolas cashed his 4 heart tricks, watching intently Mittelman's discards: 3 diamonds (8, 9 and 10), then the 9 of spades. Nicolas knew at that moment that Mittelman had 5 spades, and most probably 4 diamonds and 4 clubs. With 5 diamonds, he could have led that suit. As he led spades, it should be his 5 card suit.

The more Nicolas cashed his heart tricks, the more Mittelman was finding the situation difficult, if not unbearable.



Finally Nicolas played his 2 of clubs and Mittelman followed with the 5, in tempo. Well maybe a tiny too much in tempo, with that forced relaxed way that wants to show: No problem here. Nicolas knew at that moment Mittelman had 4 clubs and he asked himself why he didn't discard one.

Follow closely: Nicolas knew that Mittelman knew that Nicolas could play small club to the Ace, then club to his King, finding the 4-1 break and pinning the Jack or the 10 stiff with Kokish, if ever that was the case.

Why didn't he discard a club? Nicolas was asking himself. To put yourself in the other player's position is one of the top qualities of a champion. So Nicolas put himself in Mittelman's shoes.

When he played the 2 of clubs, he knew he was missing J10854 in the suit. He knew also Mittelman had 4 clubs and Kokish only one. When Mittelman put the 5 of clubs on the table, Nicolas knew this was a true card, the lowest (Kokish-Mittelman play udca), and thus, Kokish could have only the... 4. If the 5 is the lowest, then Mittelman's clubs have to be J1085.

Nicolas called for the 9, making 4 tricks in the suit and eventually claiming the Canadian Championship.

Would you say Nicolas was lucky? No, luck doesn't exist at bridge. Nicolas would tell you that playing the 9 of clubs was a 100% play, that he was taking no risk.

I told you: great players don't guess, they count. However, in this arithmetic enter not only the cards, but also all the information floating around the table: the hand count for sure, but also the way the players stay still or move, their twitches, their tempo, their will to play in tempo, their determination not to have twitches, not to hesitate. And, in case of really superior players, we have to add, I think, this other power, indescribable, non measurable, that we can almost associate with the instinct of an animal who "smells" the cards.

Only a man about universe can access this supernatural arithmetic, and has enough confidence in himself, enough courage to play the way Nicolas played.

The kibitzers, and maybe Mittelman himself, must have thought Nicolas had seen the cards. When a player makes a play that prodigious, we first are shocked. Then we might become a bit irritated, telling ourselves that play was impossible, that he really saw the cards.

Then, after being forced to admit everything happened correctly and ethically, that nobody peaked, we feel, I think, a bit of jealousy in front of that amount of intelligence. And finally, if we are honest, if we can put aside all our mistrustfulness, we cannot help feeling a profound admiration for the infinitely superior player, and marvel once again about this magnificent game we play, that gives us sometimes the chance to equal the gods.