Great Bridge Disasters

13 March 2000

Disasters at the bridge table come in all shapes and sizes, and at every level of the game, as this series will reveal. They take many forms, occurring with seemingly monotonous regularity. This one cropped up in a recent Gold Cup match, and caught out double World Champion Sandra Landy and your reporter.

			5
			Q 8 4
			A J 6
			K Q 10 8 6 2
	A K 10 9 6 4 3 2	N   W E   S			Q J 8 7
	-				J 10 9 7 6
	K 8 7 3 2				4
	-				9 5 3
			-
			A K 5 3 2
			Q 10 9 5
			A J 7 4

West	North	East	South
	Landy		Horton
	1	Pass	1
Dbl	2	2	3
4	Dbl	4	5
6	Dbl	6	Pass
Pass	Dbl	All Pass

There were several points at which North-South might have done better. With such a good fit for North's clubs, South could have responded Two Hearts, forcing to game, and intending to support clubs on the next round.

A jump to Four Spades over East's Two Spades, a cue bid, agreeing clubs, would have been a better choice than Three Spades.

South did not want to bid more than Five Clubs, because it looked as if West had shown a heart void by his cuebid of Four Hearts, and an opening heart lead might defeat Six Clubs if there was a loser elsewhere. However, when West subsequently bid Six Clubs, it should have been clear that he was void in two suits, and in that case Seven Clubs would be a good each way bet, either being cold, or a cheap save against Six Spades.

As you can see, Seven Clubs makes for North-South, so losing -1660 when North-South can go +1440 was not exactly a triumph!

Just to prove what a difficult game bridge can be, the result was the same at the other table, so there was no swing!