|
By Fred Gitelman
I had a very strange thing happen to me in 1993. I was 27 years old and playing in one of my first important international tournaments. My team had made it to the semi-finals. That meant there were just four teams remaining. My team, Canada, faced Israel (the host country), while Great Britain played the United States. The winners of these two matches would playoff to decide the championship.
These tournaments often involve a week or more of intense Bridge and we had already battled for several days in order to reduce the field to these four teams. Our match against Israel would last a full day and consist of 64 boards (deals). The match swung back and forth and at the end of the 64 boards, the score was an exact tie! This doesn't happen very often, but the conditions of contest had a way to break the tie: our teams would play an 8-board tiebreaker to determine the winner of our match.
It was almost midnight and I was already exhausted and emotionally drained, but all of a sudden we had an extra inning to play.
Here's how these team matches work. There are two tables of Bridge in play. Each of the two teams has four players in two partnerships. Suppose that my partner and I sit North-South at Table One. Our teammates will then sit East-West at Table Two. The opposing team will sit down in the remaining seats. Each board is played twice, once at each table. The results of each board at both tables are compared using the IMP scale. The winner of the match is determined by adding up the IMPs for all the boards.
It is usually considered bad strategy in a team match to try to base Bridge decisions on your results of previous boards or your expectation of the results at the other table. Many players make the mistake of trying to "get back" a previous bad result (or results) through overly aggressive bidding. As badly as you think you are doing, however, it may be the case that the opposing partnership holding your cards at the other table are doing even worse. Your teammates will not be happy if your attempt to "win back a bad result" ends up costing the match when they had you covered on the result you thought was bad.
There are times, however, when you know almost for certain how a match is going and this knowledge may affect your Bridge decisions. This was the case in the 8-board overtime against Israel, going into the last board. Five of the boards were certain pushes -- the result that was achieved at our table was the only sensible result. These were the sorts of deals in which the bidding would go 1NT-3NT and there were exactly nine tricks with no possibility for any more or any less. In a match at this level (even this late at night) there could be no IMPs swung on these five hands.
One of the boards was certain to be terrible for our team. The opponents bid to a very aggressive vulnerable game contract and my partner and I had defended very poorly. It was almost certain that we would lose 10 or more IMPs on the board. Fortunately we had one good result. The opponents had overbid in a partscore battle. My partner made a close double and we defended accurately to beat the contract by two tricks. As the opponents were not vulnerable we scored +300 on this deal and rated to win somewhere between 5 and 8 IMPs. Going into the last board of the match our team seemed to be losing but not by too much. As I picked up my hand for the last deal, I could only hope that there was some scope for winning IMPs in the cards. I was dealt a good hand:
K 10 7 4
K
A K Q 8 7 4
K J
I was the dealer and opened 1 Diamond. My partner responded 1 Heart and I chose to rebid 1 Spade. Many players would prefer to jump shift to 2 Spades on these cards, but my partnership had very high standards for this bid and my hand did not quite qualify. My partner took me back to 2 Diamonds and I had another problem. What to bid now?
I do not know what the technically correct bid is here, but given my estimation of the state of the match there could be only one choice: 3NT -- we could not possibly earn enough IMPs to win the match by playing in a partscore. We needed the game bonus. 3NT was the final contract. Left Hand Opponent (LHO) led a Heart and the dummy tabled:
Q J 3
Q 8 4 2
10 3 2
8 6 2
Not much of a dummy, to say the least! Most players would not even respond to an opening bid on these cards and having done so, most players would Pass their partner's 1 Spade rebid. My partner was not going crazy -- he was also paying attention to the results and knew that we needed a big result on the last board in order to pull out the match. It is very hard to get a big result playing at the one-level!
RHO played the Ten of Hearts at trick one and I won my singleton King. I was lucky to have escaped an opening Club lead, as the contract would have had no hope in that case. With the actual Heart lead I had a chance -- especially as it really felt like LHO had led from the Ace of Hearts. I was quite certain the Israelis would not get above the one-level with our cards. If I could make 3NT I would have the IMP swing we needed and win the match.
Here are the hands again as I saw them:
Dummy
Q J 3
Q 8 4 2
10 3 2
9 6 2
Declarer
K 10 7 4
K
A K Q 8 7 4
K J
I already had a Heart trick and six very likely Diamond tricks. I could develop enough extra tricks for my contract in Spades. The danger was that RHO might win the Ace of Spades and play a Club -- I would be forced to guess the Club layout to make my contract. There is a good case to be made for playing Spades immediately, as this play would sometimes make it harder for RHO to find the Club shift (as my solid Diamonds would not be exposed to him).
After some thought I rejected this line and decided to run the Diamonds. I hoped that if it came down to a Club guess, the defenders' discards on the Diamonds might help me to resolve that guess. Unfortunately the defenders gave me no clues. Both discarded some Spades and some Hearts but there were no Club signals. After finishing the Diamonds I played a Spade, really hoping that LHO was dealt the Ace of Spades. RHO won, of course, and played back the inevitable small Club. Would you play the King or the Jack?
As I was sitting there pondering which Club to play, a remarkable thought entered my mind: this is absurd! I have been playing high-level Bridge for a solid week and the whole thing is coming down to a complete guess at trick nine of the last hand of an 8-board overtime!
At that moment, Bridge seemed like a very random exercise to me. I was not very happy to be in this position. There were dozens of kibitzers and several journalists who had been watching every card of the overtime match with great interest. They were waiting for me to make my decision. It was 1:30 in the morning and I sat there for several minutes trying to come up with some reason for which card to play. I almost felt like laughing as the situation was very silly -- these tournaments are pretty serious affairs, however, and laughing might not have gone over very well. I had to play a card, but I didn't know if I should play the King or the Jack. Help!
Finally it came to me: the opening lead had been a Heart and not a Club. LHO appeared to have at least a few Clubs that were headed by an honor. Clubs was the unbid suit and would normally be the suit of choice to lead on our auction. Why did LHO decide to lead a Heart, the suit that my partner had bid instead?
I could think of no reason why LHO would avoid leading a Club from the Queen. There was some logic, however, in not leading from the Ace of Clubs. If LHO had the Ace of Clubs he would be pretty certain that I held the Club King along with running Diamonds for the bidding. He might be hesitant to lead from the Ace of Clubs in fear that I would be able to take the first nine tricks. Leading a Heart away from the Ace could also have the same result, of course, but if blowing an early trick is the issue, leading from the Club Ace is much more dangerous.
So I played the Jack of Clubs, hoping it would draw the Ace that my clue suggested would be in LHO's hand. When LHO put the Queen of Clubs on the table it looked very much like the Jack of Diamonds that wiped Steve McQueen out of the big poker game in The Cincinnati Kid. The defense took four Club tricks in addition to their two Aces and I was down two tricks.
I sat in stunned silence. My partner had already compared with our teammates (who had long since finished the eight boards) away from the table as I was thinking. I was right about one thing -- if I had guessed the Clubs we would have won the match. The results at the other table had been exactly as I expected and the team had played a contract of 1 Diamond with our cards on the last board. We had needed to both bid and make 3NT on the last board in order to win the match. My misguess in Clubs meant that our team had been eliminated from the tournament.
By the way, LHO was 3424 on the last hand with the Ace-Jack of Hearts and the Queen of Clubs. I have no idea why he did not lead a Club.
My partner then did a wonderful thing. He said, "I would have made the same play." This statement was especially remarkable, as my partner was (and still is) a very fierce competitor who really hates losing. These types of players can be pretty nasty and critical towards their partners at times, especially when they are frustrated by bad Bridge results. My partner was there for me at this time, however, and I really appreciated it.
I had a long plane trip ahead of me in which I could try to deal with the tremendous pain that the Club suit had inflicted on me. I tried to tell myself that, "Bridge is just a game," but that did not work. I already knew that Bridge was much more than just a game. Bridge is technique, psychology, partnership communications, mathematics, discipline, competition, deception, and many other things all rolled into one. The intellectual challenges that Bridge presents and the emotional highs and lows that it can bring can make Bridge seem almost as big as life itself. It certainly was then (and still is) a huge part of my life.
Yes, it sometimes seems horribly unfair that the "luck of the cards" can decide who is the winner of a Bridge game at the end of the day (even in duplicate tournaments). Some people see this as a flaw in Bridge, but I have come to think that this property helps make Bridge a great game. The "random element" in Bridge means that on any given day, any player has a chance to beat any other player. It may be a small chance in some cases, but it is a chance. When you also consider that no matter how good you are at Bridge, you can always learn more, it is not surprising that many people who learn to play are Bridge players for the rest of their lives.
|
