The Evening Independent – 18 Abr 1966 por Paul Boardman
Believe it or not, your bridge writer actually held the North hand in a duplicate game last week! It confirmed my orbit theory. That theory is simply stated: «Ever since the astronauts have been fooling around in outer space the bridge hands have also been going into orbit.»
THE BIDDING: Everything about the bidding shown in the box is true except the final call of seven hearts. The extreme and unusual bidding on my part put my partner into such a state of shock that she forgot to show preference for my first suit Can you blame her? She left me in seven clubs.
We were fortunate, though, as the hand will make either seven clubs or seven hearts as the cards lay. The real surprise came when we opened the traveling score and found that no one else had bid and made a grand slam! Up until that point I had felt that the hand was a put up job.
This hand is so like one in Dorothy Hayden’s new book «Bid Better, Play Better» that I cannot resist quoting her interesting story: «When bridge players get together they entertain one another with stories about hands. In the, belief that every book should have some entertainment value, this chapter is devoted to amusing hands from real life. «The best hand I ever held, and also one of the most frustrating, occurred in a rubber bridge game at the New York Cavendish Club. My partner was Harry Fishbein, famous major domo of the Mayfair Club.
Vulnerable against non-vulnerable opponents, I picked up the following incredible collection:
A K Q J 3 2 
A K Q 10 4 3 2 
«It’s hard to imagine that anything tragic could happen to this beauty, isn’t it?
«By the way, we don’t play for peanuts in this game and even if we did, a vulnerable grand slam comes to a heck of a lot of peanuts!
«Sam Stayman, on my right, dealt and opened three hearts. Now if I had had an average partner I would have just picked a suit and bid a grand slam myself. With an expert for a partner, however, I knew I could find out which suit was better, so I bid four hearts.
My left-hand opponent passed, Fishy jumped to six clubs, and Stayman passed. This development didn’t worry me. (After all, I held the spade suit and I could always bid seven spades if the bidding got out of control.) So I bid six hearts to force Fishy to choose another suit.
Do you see any danger in this, playing with an expert? I didn’t. In fact I was mentally patting myself on the back for handling the situation so adroitly when catastrophe struck. Over six hearts Fishy inadvertently bid six diamonds! «Of course the opponents kindly pointed out that six diamonds was insufficient. Under the laws Fishy could either make the bid sufficient in the same suit by bidding seven diamonds in which case there is no penalty, or he could substitute any other sufficient call, in which case his partner would be barred from the bidding.
«Fishy naturally hated to bid seven diamonds. (He had only a small doubleton.) So he corrected the bid to six notrump and I was barred from the auction with the best hand I had ever seen!
«It seems funny now, but imagine how I felt having to lay that hand down as dummy at six notrump.
«As an anticlimax Fishy actually held
5 4 A 7 6 4 6 5 K J 4 3 2
Both my suits broke and he easily made six notrump but, of course, either seven spades or seven diamonds was laydown.