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My Dog Shawnee and the Queen of Diamonds
By Bernard Marcoux, Ste-Adèle
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West opens 1 , your partner passes and East
also. You have:
 AQ72
AJ4
 KJ93
 94
Have you discussed with your partner
balancing bids in 4th seat? No? Well, you have a
lot of work to do.
Let’s say you reopen with 1NT, 11-16 over a
major opening, with or without a stopper (nothing’s perfect).
West rebids 2 and your partner doubles, negative. What is your
bid?
WEST Part. EAST You
1
p p 1NT
2
X p ?
As your range
(11-16) is quite large, you have now to bid your hand to the
fullest. So you jump to 3,
showing 4 cards and a maximum. Your partner bids 4
and everybody passes.
West leads the heart king.
Dummy
K83
62
A862
KJ72
You
AQ72
AJ4
KJ93
94
You swear
silently against your partner (you will understand later why
silently). Why didn’t she (yes, it is my wife) bid 3nt? But
now is not the time for recriminations, you have to make 10
tricks.
You duck the lead and LHO comes back a small heart.
He was end
played on the lead with most probably KQ of hearts, the Queen of
diamonds and AQ of clubs.
He could have played back a spade,
but he didn’t want to squeeze his partner’s trump holding (he
doesn’t know your spades are anaemic).
You win with your heart Jack and… pause. Count!
West has
repeated his hearts, so he has 6. Spades are probably 4-2. So
East has 4 spades and 2 hearts (if he has 5 spades, it will be
verrrrrry difficult).
He will always make a spade trick, so why
not give it to him now? But in a peculiar way!
You are the
best player of the club for nothing. My idol Julius Caesar used
to say: Better to be 1st in Ste-Adèle than 2nd
in Buenos Aires!
He was not
talking about bridge, but we can transpose and use those famous
sentences in other circumstances, don’t we?
You play a
club.
West jumps on his Ace and plays back a 3rd
heart, ruffed by East, killing your Ace. But that heart Ace was
useless anyway.
Opponents must believe you have lost your mind
(your wife and partner looks absolutely certain you are crazy),
but you are not the best player of that club for nothing, I
repeat! They don’t know it yet, but you are in the process of
counting the hand. So you sacrificed the Ace of hearts for the
big picture, opponents being reduced, in your superior mind, to
mere pawns in your brilliant plan of making the contract.
After
his ruff, East, end played now, plays back a club; small, Queen
and King from dummy.
How will you
play the diamonds?
First you have to play the spades and clubs
to obtain the count.
Small spade to your Ace, Queen of spades
(West had 2, like you imagined) and a 3rd spade to
dummy’s King.
Then Jack of clubs, both following, and small
club ruffed, West pitching a heart on the 4th club.
The hands were then:
Dummy
K83
62
A862
KJ72
WEST
EAST
xx
J10xx
KQxxxx
xx
?x
?xx
AQx
xxxx
You
AQ72
AJ4
KJ93
94
The position is now :
Dummy
--
--
A86
--
WEST
EAST
--
--
Q
--
?x
?xx
--
--
You
--
--
KJ9
--
The Queen of
diamond is the card you have to find now.
You play against club
players who open majors with 9 points and minors with 14, and
who never alert! They often play 70%, but never against you!
Enough of hesitations and bad mouthing.
Where is that Queen of
diamonds?
Barry Crane, the
world’s greatest match point player (May he rest in peace. He
was assassinated 2 or 3 months after calling the director
against my wife. She assures me it was not her. Now I always
swear silently, as you saw previously, that is why I am still
alive. You live and you learn, they say. In my case, You learn
and you live), so Barry Crane said the reason for his successes
was called Oscar, a mythical bird that would stand on his left
shoulder and tell him how the cards lied.
Well, in my
case, it is not a bird, but my Airedale dog, Shawnee, who sits
down on my left (not on my shoulder, she weighs 75 pounds!) and
who, depending on the card I am looking for, puts her left paw
on my lap (telling me the card is on my left) or her right paw
(I let you conclude).
Or she wants a
cookie!
J
She can also
push me with her nose: twice, the card is on my left; once,
well… you should know by now. Or she wants to go out to relieve
herself.
All this
nonsense to tell you I don’t know where is that damned Queen of
diamond.
I know West has 2 diamonds and East, 3. So 3 chances
for the Queen to be on my right, and 2 on my left.
But these
scoundrels open majors with 9 points, and weak 2’s with 5 to 8,
but sometimes they have 7 cards and 11 points.
No alert, ever.
I give a look to Shawnee, she looks back at
me with teary eyes, then closes her eyes, opens them again,
looks to the side. It is obvious she is at a complete loss: no
paw, no push with the nose. These players are so unpredictable
(even them sometimes, they don’t know what they are doing) that
she is mystified. Poor me! I am all alone.
Even my dog is abandoning me.
I have been thinking for at least 2 minutes,
torn between 2 lines of play.
Then I see how I will play those diamonds. A
clue? It is worth what it is worth but I want those players to
suffer, I want to give them false hopes and then, at the instant
they will think they have me, crush them (the hopes, not the
players). Did I tell you I was the best player of that club?
Yes? You could have forgotten.
So I play the 9 of diamonds from hand. Has
West hesitated a bit? He follows with this microscopic slowness
that looks to quick (WOW!) and you know then you got him. Ace
from dummy, small from East.
Small diamond from dummy, small to your
right, King from hand, QUEEN!!!
Wouf, wouf, says Shawnee!!
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