Suited for Anything – I arrived at a tournament in Tel Aviv just in time to go to my assigned table in the Individual event.
The director said something in Israeli, and everyone started to play.
The Frenchman opposite me opened the bidding with une peake. Righty passed, I raised to two peake, LHO passed, and partner jumped to quatre peake. Before she made her final pass, my right hand opponent turned to me and asked, “What’s a peake?”
“I have no idea”, I said.
“You mean to tell me,” she declared, “that you bid two of them and you don’t know what they are?”
“That’s right,” I answered.
“Well, I double that bid,” she said rather vehemently.
Quatre peake, bid, doubled, and made, followed by “Director!”
After the director found out what had happened, he inquired of me, “How could you bid two peake when you don’t know what they are?”
“I have 4-3-3-3 distribution and a single raise for any suit that partner opens,” I said. “If he had bid one banana, I would have said two bananas.”
The headline in the next day’s Daily Bulletin read: “How to drive your opponents bananas.”
Submitted by Alice Evans Brooklyn, New York.