April 2012 is becoming a very unhealthy month for bridge players. First, on April 4, former world champion Hans Kreijns (B&W picture) passed away. Last week, the ACBL site reported that Lea Dupont died earlier this month. Yesterday, various sources reported that Paul Erich had passed away.
For those of you who don’t recognize the names. Lea Dupont is probably best known as the longtime partner, both at and away from the table, of the famous Italian Benito Garozzo but she was a fine player too, winning a couple of US national championships, bronze in the Europeans and silver in the World senior pairs. I did play against her and Benito in a swiss match (8 boards) at a national somewhere around 2000. While dealing the cards, Benito noticed that we were playing Suction against their 1NT. Suction is a defense where all the bids over 1NT show either a single suiter in the next higher suit, or a two suiter in the 2 suits above that. That is, 1NT-2♣, shows ♦ or the majors. 1NT-2♦ shows ♥ or ♠&♣. Apparently they had never discussed this, and Benito asked for a time-out to prepare a defense against the defense. Somehow he got that and he started scribbling away on a piece of paper. After 5 minutes and somewhere on page 2, Lea stopped him “Benito, there is no way I’m going to read and remember all this, let’s just play, it won’t come up anyway”. Benito grumbled a bit but started to play. She was right, suction didn’t come up.
Paul was the author of a bridge column, his articles were published in 18 or so regional papers. He also served as a member of various committees for the bridge federation and as the captain of the Dutch Seniors Team at the world championship last year. Earlier this year, he went from captaining back to playing and played in the trials for the senior team himself. His team qualified though he didn’t play in the finals. Another good performance is that he, playing in a team with my brother, won the 1st division teams back in 2007, with promotion to the Meesterklasse. Besides all that, he was nice, friendly, warm guy who will be missed.
The last time I played against him, was in a club game the evening after a training match for the various national teams at ‘t Onstein, September 2011. All the internationals participated, but obviously took this as a fun event, after playing 50 or so serious boards and a nice dinner offered by the sponsor. Geert didn’t, she was quite nervous playing against all these internationals and now she even got to play against the captain. In the process she passed 3♣ in this auction, not a success, when partner quickly wrapped up 13 tricks. Paul kindly explained that she should bid on over 3♣, then offered to get coffee for the table.
That is 3 famous players in less than 2 weeks, who transferred to the game somewhere up there in the sky. Saint Peter is certainly busy finding more players for that game. If you don’t want to play there anytime soon, my advice is be to take every safety play in sight for the rest of the month, don’t overbid as your partner may be shocked when you put down dummy and avoid risky things like finesses. Here is a nice example of avoiding risks that I ran across while doing some background research for this blog. By the way, if you ever google on Benito Garozzo, don’t believe what Wikipedia says on Blue Club. It is plain wrong. You are in 5♦ on a spade lead, the opponents being silent in the auction. Plan the play.
You have 2 certain losers in the majors and have to find the ♦Q. With no bidding from the opponents, that is a plain 50% gamble, can you improve?
Stop and think first!
Yes, win the ♠A, cash 2 top clubs and ruff a club with the ♦7. Now play a heart to the ace and the 4th club. If east discards, ruff with the ♦3, west cannot overruff as he still has a club. If east follows, simply pitch your heart loser.
Now give up a heart. Whoever wins, must return a major suit card. Win the ♠K, ruff a heart and play your last spade in this position. Whoever wins this trick, is endplayed and will have to open up the trump suit. You cannot go wrong then.
For this to work, west should have either 4 or 5 clubs; or 2 clubs without the ♦Q. With 3 clubs in west, you are back to the original 50% guess. This hand was played back in 1965 by Giorgio Belladonna.
Finally, for those who will see me in the next days: Don’t try to drop a singleton honor. I just did, it landed on my right foot and now I’m limping around. The doctor says that it will go away in a few days.