Honors for Eddie Kantar, a Top Player and Teacher
Eddie Kantar is the American Contract Bridge League’s honorary member this year, and he is surely the most talented player-teacher-writer ever.
He has won two world titles, the 1977 and 1979 Bermuda Bowls. He also has 17 national championships and was voted into the Hall of Fame in 1996. In recent years, he has played little serious bridge, preferring social games with experts and his wife, Yvonne.
Several of his books have won awards from the American Bridge Teachers Association. And his lessons, which combine top-rate instruction with clever quips, have been very popular for 65 years.
Kantar was a top-ranked table-tennis player who competed in a world championship, but he says that he did not get close to a medal. He was also very good at tennis and paddle tennis.
The diagramed deal occurred many years ago in Dallas. The auction finally ground to a halt in five hearts. Although North’s raise to five hearts asked Kantar (South) to bid six with a diamond control, Kantar felt that his hand did not warrant going higher.
West led the diamond ace and continued with a second diamond. After ruffing, Kantar played a heart to dummy’s king, which held. What did declarer do next?
It would have been easy to get careless. If South had led a club to his ten and played a top heart, West would have taken the trick and locked declarer in the dummy with either a spade or a club. South would have ruffed a black suit to try to get back to his hand to draw West’s last trump, but West would have overruffed.
Instead, Kantar cashed dummy’s spade ace, spade king and club ace before leading a club to his ten. Then after he played his heart queen, he could ruff whatever West returned, draw the last trump and claim.
This type of play is called the dentist’s coup, in which declarer extracts a defender’s safe-exit cards before giving him the lead.