Chennai 2015: The Furca Coup

42nd World Bridge Teams Championships

Chennai, India • 26 September – 10 October 2015

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The 42nd World Bridge Teams Championships and the 10th World Transnational Open Teams Championship will be held at the ITC Grand Chola Hotel, Chennai (former Madras), India.

October 5th, 2015

A few days ago in the csbnews.org  Bridge & Humor section we published an article written by Paul Huggins. In the story Paul told us about his misadventures with a hand of bridge: we managed to produce a defensive coup (The Biltcliffe Coup) that required all of our natural talent, timing and technique in the field of poor bridge!

Paul explained that a Biltcliffe Coup has four main requirements:

• Opponents must be about to play in a part-score, but you protect in the pass-out seat
• Opponents must now bid to game.
• You must double this game.
• They make the doubled game.

Today mid-morning of Argentina USA2 ( 7th in the RR) was playing the final set of the BB quarterfinals against China (2nd in the RR). Only two boards to end the match, when I began to watch, and China had a 11 IMPs advantage. On the other table the game was over and the last two contracts favored China, so the majority was convinced that barring a miracle, China would finish as the winner.

The BBO VG showed that in the other room N/S chose to play 4, and scored +450.

As soon the board appeared the commentators wrote:

BroLucius (David Bird): Excellent spade slam, played by South. Very unlucky, of course, with spades 4-0.
kit (Kit Woolsey) : USA can’t pick up anything here, so will need a miracle on the last board.

And the bidding start:

South opened 2NT and after West’s pass, North chose to say 4 = long spades and no slam interest. East doubled, lead directing or looking for a sacrifice. South said 4. West with a 4-3-3-3 hand with lots of quacks and J 10 7 6 paso passed. North passed and East perhaps believing that they were losing the match and that inaction was equal to defeat, chose to say 4NT, looking a NV sacrifice against V.

West chose 5 and he was doubled.

Kit Woolsey now wrote: This might be the miracle, depending on how badly 5 does.

Commentators speculations continued as Hurd was leading his 5:

BroLucius: Very risky effort by East, particularly as bad spade break may have endangered 4 (so far as he knew).
BroLucius: It could be a huge number off. Possibly a phantom from what East could see.
BroLucius: Much better in hearts…
kit: big difference between 1100 and 1400, considering match score
BroLucius: East should expect his partner to have some number of spades and that means that he cannot expect a big fit for one of his suits.
kit: so if last board is flat …..

Declarer played low from dummy and Wooldridge won the first trick with his Q. South continued with the 6 , 2, K, 4. Hurd returned the 4, Li played the 8 and South played the 10…declarer won the trick with the J.

Li continued with a small heart to the 10, South won with the valet, played the A and declarer couldnt pay less than 1400…13 IMPs for USA2 now winning by only 2 IMPs. The next hand was a push and USA2 got the ticket to the semifinals.

These are the Furca Coup main requirements:

• Opponents should be winning the match by little
• Few boards to end the match
• You arrive to a sound game
• They reopen, a no hope sacrifice
• You double
• You collect what you need to win your match

These were the results of the boards in all the BB tables.

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