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Bridge, at least on any one particular evening, is not a "just" game. We have all witnessed the spectacle of the palooka who doesn't think at trick one, is therefore unable to get to dummy to take a finesse later in the play, and so is forced to lay down the Ace from hand, dropping your singleton king offsides. What can you say -- inferior play is sometimes rewarded in bridge.
However, once in a while, you make a thoughtful play to cater to some fairly unlikely lie of the cards, and poetic justice reigns, as on this hand I played at a regional tournament in New York state:
Dummy  Q  7  Q J 10 6 4  A Q 8 6 4 2 me J 8 6 3 Q 8 5 3 A K 8 K 3 |
With no interference, we land in a fine contract of 5 Diamonds. The opening leader takes their two major-suit aces and then plays a second round of hearts. You ruff, and the King falls on your right. That's a little strange, but at any rate, here you are. What could be simpler? You have the rest, you pull trumps and then run the clubs. Well, although you have the top three club honors, there are only 5 cards out, and a suit does split 3-2 most of the time, a surprising 32% of the time or so this isn't the case. Clubs might split 4-1. Is there anything that can be done? |
| Dummy Q 7 Q J 10 6 4 A Q 8 6 4 2 me J 8 6 3 Q 8 5 3 A K 8 K 3 |
The answer is yes. It is a good principle of declarer play to never pull trumps automatically, and with a little thought, I came up with an alternate plan. I drew exactly two rounds of trumps, then played the King and a small club towards dummy. Was I nuts? What if someone trumped this with the trump I had "forgotten" to pull? If you think it through you will see that this objection is groundless. If someone can trump the second round of clubs, it means the clubs were splitting 4-1 all along, so the simple line of pulling three rounds of trumps would have left me one down, with an unavoidable club loser. My line of play had a slight advantage -- if clubs were indeed 3-2, no one could trump in, and so I would at this point pull the outstanding trump and then run my clubs. However, if clubs were 4-1, but the person with the singleton club was also the person with only two trumps, I could still make my contract. And so it came to pass, for this was the entire hand: |
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As you can see, when I played the King of clubs, the Jack fell on my left. The fall of an honor always gives one pause, but I had no choice. I continued with a second club and was rewarded with the beautiful sight of a heart discard. For once, the unlikely distribution (the person with the singleton club is more likely to be longer in trumps) my line of play was designed to succeed against was reality. I won my Ace, trumped a low club in my hand to establish the suit, trumped a spade in dummy, pulled East's last trump and now ran the clubs for the rest of the tricks. In chess they have a saying: "good players are lucky." In bridge, good play and luck have even less connection, but you frequently can't benefit from a fortunate lie unless you play the hand with care and forethought: then it is possible to enjoy, every now and then, the fruits of "poetic justice." |