Friday, August 27, 2010

The (Doe) Rabbit visits the club (part III)

The conclusion of our exciting three-board sit-out after being bumped.  This time, the South hand was ♠QT73 A42 KJT4 ♣53.  LHO opened 1♣, RHO bid 1♠ whereupon LHO closed the auction with 3NT.  My partner led 2 and dummy came down with ♠AJ842 KT3 763 ♣86.  Declarer took my K with the A and proceeded to cash six clubs.  On these, partner pitched three small hearts.  Dummy pitched the remaining two diamonds, and the T3 of hearts.  I pitched a spade, two hearts and my J.  Declarer then played the ♠K out of his hand, to which all followed small, then played the 8.  I won with the T, cashed my A, felling dummy's K then returned my 4 to partner's Q and 9.  Partner then had to concede to declarer's Q for his ninth trick.  Although this was the par result, it turned out surprisingly well for us: 8 matchpoints out of 11.

My nemesis at the replay was apparently not content with a mere 8 match-points.  No, she wanted them all!  The play followed similar lines at first.  On the clubs my counterpart, Ms Zia-Rabbit, nonchalantly pitched the ♠3, ♠7, followed by two hearts.  Instead of conceding a diamond for the hoped-for throw-in this declarer went straight about the spades.  K from hand, on which South played the T (and North the 6) followed by the ♠5 on which North played the 9.  Never before have I witnessed such studied indifference on pitching the crucial two small spades.  Declarer was taken in completely!  He now took the "marked" finesse against the Q whereupon N/S took the rest of the tricks.  Down 1 for all the match-points.

So was this mystery personage Zia in disguise?  Or Ms. Rabbit with sticky fingers?  I'll let you dwell on it a little.  But remember this (form part I): this was daytime bridge!

Time to 'fess up.

This isn't how it happened at all.  All of our brilliant defensive plays were by the South hand, but there was no sit-out and no kibitzing.  In fact they were two-board rounds.  And my partner and I didn't sit N/S, we sat E/W.  Each of these remarkable defenses was achieved (perpetrated?) against us!  And by three different Souths.  Of course, this means that my descriptions of the play at "our" table were all completely bogus, but nonetheless reasonable.

One of the Souths was playing with an expert and they managed a little over 50%, the other two Souths garnered scores in the 43-49% range.

Ms. Rabbit or Ms. Zia?  You be the judge.

2 comments:

  1. What chocolate almond biscuits were they serving at the club? I would really love to get some for myself...

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  2. They weren't. For some reason our bridge clubs don't seem to understand the allure of chocolate almond biscuits. These must have been brought in.

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