Last Sunday, it was April Fool’s Day and bridge writers all over the world put in the obligatory fake news items. A few good ones:
- Bridge magazine IMP reported that Dutch internationals Paulissen and Jansma had transferred to the bridgeclub Kralendijk in Bonaire and would from now on play in the Central American region of the WBF, with the goal of winning the Bermuda Bowl. The article looked legitimate at first sight considering that the pair is very good but does not seem to have a chance to make it on the open team this year, though the first error is in about the second sentence: “the transfer market closed on March 31” which is not correct as there is no transfer market in bridge.
- The bridgewinners.com site, usually a good site for news about the US bridge scene, reported that the Amoils team was stripped of their Vanderbilt title. One of the players apparently forgot to renew his ACBL membership. Again, this was entirely possible as for most US events ACBL membership was not required and until some years back, the TD’s had no way to check if people were a paid up member. Computers changed this, of course, nowadays the TD knows within seconds if a player is eligible.
- In France, a mail circulated that penalty doubles would be abolished as of September 1, 2012. Nobody can double for penalties anymore these days, so why keep them? Clearly impossible, as this requires a change in the laws. The new laws won’t come into effect until September 2017 at the earliest. And, in case you are worried, the WBFLC is not considering to abolish penalty doubles.
- But by far the best was this article in “Bridge”, the magazine of the Dutch Bridge Federation, “Monaco haalt topparen binnen” (“Top pairs transfer to Monaco”). The article says that sponsor Pierre Zimmerman has hired Norwegians Helness-Helgemo and Italians Fantoni-Nunes and is trying to give them Monegasque citizenship. That way, the team could represent Monaco in the European Championships and the Bermuda Bowl. This does indeed sound like an April 1st joke, after all, who would change citizenship for this?
Of course, if you have been following the bridge-related news, you know that this news item is actually correct. On December 14, 2010, the well informed bridgetopics.com site already announced exactly the same thing and everybody and his cat know about this since then. It only took 1.5 years before the editors of the Bridge Magazine read the news. They countered by publishing it as “hot news”.
This makes it the best joke I’ve seen this year. Take something old that sounds strange but is actually true, hope that people have forgotten by now and just publish it as news. April 1st is known as Den Doeraka in Russian, or day of the idiot. My vote for the biggest idiot this year, is for the editor of the magazine, for thinking that he can get away with republishing old news.
Time for some real bridge. Speaking about idiots, sometimes good TD’s can be fooled by the players. Here is a subtle example.
Matchpoints, decent but not top-level. No alerts in the auction, so assume that it is all natural. You are declarer in 4♥ and get to play this on the ♦A lead. East encourages, west continues with the ♦K and then switches to the ♠Q won by your ace, east discouraging. Plan the play and note that overtricks are important.
If you lead a heart, you will find that the suit splits 2-2 with the ♥K onside (as was to be expected).
OK, so now think about your line of play.
If you count points, you’ll see that the opponents have 18 of them. From east’s carding, you can place the ♦Q there. West is likely to have only 2 diamonds, why else would he switch to a spade at trick 3, so east has the ♦J as well. That gives 15 hcp to west, the minimum he can have for his bid. A club finesse thus won’t work, east simply cannot have that high card.
The shape of the EW hands is also known, west has 2 hearts and 2 diamonds and thus 5-4 in the black suits. East’s shape must be 2 hearts, 6 diamonds and 3-2 in the black suits.
At this point, you can spot an alternative to the club finesse: with 4 (or 5) spades in west, you can cash the ♠AK, take a heart finesse, ruff a spade and cash the remaining hearts. With 1 heart to go, the situation will be as in the diagram. The last heart squeezes west.
The line is 100% once you assume that west has a regular 15-17 overcall, the full hand was:
In practice, south did not find this line of play, he simply took a club finesse at some point, lost that and ended with 10 tricks. He did call the TD though, EW play Raptor, so the 1NT overcall showed 4♠ and 5m and something in the 10 to 16 hcp range. East forgot to alert. Obviously, the west hand matches both a regular 1NT overcall as well as Raptor 1NT, and the squeeze works in both cases. South now claims an overtrick, as with 4♠ and 5♣, the squeeze becomes more obvious and he’d certainly have played for it. He can actually explain this correctly. Do you give the overtrick to him?
The hand was published in the magazine for tournament directors. The author fell for South’s story and said that we should award him an overtrick. The squeeze does become more obvious when it is known that west is 5-4 in the black suits (4♠-5♦ can be eliminated as an option after a few tricks). He is right about this. However, south did take a 0% line in actual play regardless of the explanation. I’m not going to give an overtrick now that he sees how the hand should have been played with all 13 cards in sight.
Note that west could have overcalled a natural 1NT on a 3-2-2-6 hand, but then the club finesse would still be a 0% line, as the queen would have been a singleton.