The Vugraph and other stories by Guido Ferraro

9th NEC World Bridge Team Olympiad; 24 August 1992

The first Vugraph match was between France and Indonesia, with the French the logical favourites. Logically enough, they won 21-9. To be frank, there was not very much of interest in the whole of this set of 20 boards, except for one, which drew the attention of the Vugraph operators from the exquisitely technical point of view.

Board 10  Dealer: East; Vul: ALL

	A K 3  A 10 6 3  K 9 8  9 7 6
8 5 2  K Q J 5 4 2  10 5  Q 8		Q J 7  9 7 Q J 7 2   J 4 3 2
	10 9 6 4  8  A 6 4 3  A K 10 5

West	North	East	South
	Perron		Chemla
			1
1	Dbl	Pass	1
Pass	3NT	All Pass

East led the 9. Well, what would you do in Perron’s place, when West has covered the nine with the Jack?

Suppose you decide to play low. If you want, you may analyse the various alternatives which may develop when West switches to a diamond, but in real life, West decided to continue with the 8, Perron took this trick immediately, and correctly in our view, with his A, surely because, keeping AK bare, he did not want to give East the chance to establish his spades without using an honour. It is obvious that the French champion suspected a doubleton spade to his right and wanted to guard himself in advance against a defence which would have been fatal.

At this point, he had no alternative but to turn his attention to clubs:  AK and another to East’s J. East’s countermove was as expected: he led the 2. Double dummy, we can easily see that all North would have had to do was to win with his K, cash the A and continue with K and another.

Perron, however, thought that his right-hand opponent would hold two spades, six hearts, the known doubleton clubs and therefore three diamonds. Thus, playing for the diamonds being 3-3, he allowed West to win the trick with his 10. When the same West continued the suit, he went up with his K, only to see the Queen fall at his left, to his astonishment. Next, he crossed to dummy with the A, but this time West discarded a spade! So the contract had gone down?

No, only in your Daily Bulletin, Sunday 23 August 1992 dreams. Follow me for just another moment, if you haven’t got a headache yet. When you cash the 10 you will find out that West started with 3-6-2-2, so all you need to do is cross to your hand with a spade to strip West of his last exit card and put the 10 on the table, hoping to scoop East’s now blank 7 (YES!) and force West to lead into the unbelievable A6 tenace. And have you seen how 3NT can always be defeated, according to the commentators?