Evening Star Newspaper, October 19, 1930, Page 103

ABITS have no place in bridge when they take the form of preference for some one kind of play as opposed to others. When this occurs the player is comparable to a carpenter who p:e- fers a particular tool in his kit and keeps "looking for opportunities to use it to the exclusion of everything else. His fin- ished product can hardly clash with that of the man who knows the right way to use all of the tools, also the right time and place. We have all seen the player who in- .variably runs his trumps at the outset, also the one who always tries for a ruff in dummy before he i.us his trumps, if there is any earthly way to do so. Those prescriptions are ideally adapted to some cases, but when followed blindly, it is only mere luck as to whether they fit or not. The sane player diagnoses the situation with all of his available methods of pro- cedure in mind and selects the one that seems best to fit the particular problem at hand. ; Of all the habits, probably none is more widespread than that of the in- veterate finesser. Let him see a possible finesse in his hand and he will go for it, justifying his failures with the platitude, “Well, a finesse may gain you a trick, but it can never lose one.” If that were true, the corner store would probably sell bridge-playing machines on which you could set the dial at “finesse” and sim- ply turn a erank to grind out the tricks. Finesses may be the very worst thing in some hands, and the player who studies his problem kéenly will avoid them whenever there is any way to do so and still attain his goal. One of the finest examples of refusing to finesse that has appeared in some time occurred in the recent Atlantic Coast contract championship at Atlan- tic City, the beneficiaries of it being Walter Malowan and Comdr. Winfield Liggett, jr., who won the title. Here is the way the cards lay: aAL06 ¥4 ®AS852 HJI854 439433 AKS5 YA92 OKT74 &HAQ9€S Malowan bid one no trump on the Bouth cards, Liggett {n the North two, Malowan three, and West led the queen of hearts, on which East put the king to unblock. Malowan let that trick go, also the second, fearing that East’s lead of the 3 might be a false card, and he took the third with his ace. In addi- tion to this, he could count two sure tricks in spades, two in diamonds and one in clubs, for a total of six. Three more were needed, and they could be got only in clubs, if at all. Surveying his situation, Malowan saw that he could afford to lose a trick to the king of clubs if East had it, for the latter could not then return a heart to the danger hand. Thus, if the king was with East, three extra tricks were sure whether he finessed or not. There was also the bare possibility that the king might be a singleton in the West hand, in which event he would be defeated un- less he dropped the king with an ace lead. So, with everything to gain and nothing to lose by the play, he led his ace of clubs. The result is obvious. He took one more trick than his contract. This play made a tremendous gain for his pair. At every other table the hand was bid the same and the finesse was tried, declarer being set two tricks in each case. At one of those tables Philip Hal Sims, in the West position, doubled the contract and defeated it two tricks for a loss of 600 points, whereas the ace lead of clubs would have enabled the opponents to score 1,010 points—a dif- ference of 1,610 points from the play of ene card. THE SUNDAY STAR, WASHINGTON, DB. €, OCTOBER 1, WsG & /uE BripGE FOrRuM Habits Are Good Things to Avoid When They Involve Preferences for Certain Plays. By Shepard Barclay. : T he Expért s Lament. I am thrilled with each ovation when I see the admiration And the hero-worship found across the foam; They accept each thing I tell them as my pet ideas I sell them, And I pack the biggest hall or hippodrome; As an expert I'm accepted even more than I expected And I feel I'd never want to cease to roam; You may charge -me with confusion, but I've come to this conclusion— That an expert is a man away from home. But the strangers that adore me pretty soon begin to bore me, And the wish begins to filter through my dome. That I had some one to hoot me, or confute me, or dispute me, So I'd feel that I am back in home, sweet home. A Law a Week. : A DOUBLE or redouble when it is partner’s turn to declare. When this occurs, the opponents may consult before declaring further, and may take their choice of three alternatives: 1. To call the bid made before the offense the final bid. 2. To call the, doubled or redoubled bid the final bid. 3. To de- mand a new deal. (Next week—Doubling or redoubling and naming a bid which is not the one that can be legally doubled or redoubled.). Contract Systems. HOW much high card strength is re- quired for a minimum bid in a reg- ular goulash, and how many trumps do you need to consider them normal sup- port for partner’s suit bid? On both of these matters, leading authorities take extremely divergent views. Because of the freakish distribu- tion of cards in goulash deals, with each hand generally made up of extremely long suits.and void or short suits, the mathematics applying to sound bids in a normal deal cannot be obeyed. This bizarre condition causes some authori- ties to frown upon original bids with minimum high card strength and insist that more high card strength is neces- sary to open the bidding in a goulash deal. Some of those who ask only two high card tricks in a regular deal insist on at least a half a trick more in a goulash. Others reverse this, saying that high cards are less important in a goulash because most of the tricks are taken by distributional values instead of high cards; some of the regular two and a half trick showers reduce this amount to two in a goulash deal. The same variance is found in regard to minimum support of partner’s trump suit. Some experts argue that in a goulash deal the original bidder’s suit is likely to be longer than in a regular deal and therefore not as many trumps are needed for safe support; some who ordinarily require four little trumps or else three to the ace, king or queen, will reduce these holdings by one card. Others take the stand that the hostile trumps are likely to be bunched in the hand of one of the opponents, and that therefore partner of a suit bidder should have more trumps in a goulash hand than in a regular hand; some who ordi- narily consider three little trumps or two to the ace or king as enough are in- sistent upon at least one more as sup- port in a goulash. As between these extreme views, a player must take his choice, but it is well to have an understanding with partner about them so that the side will not come to grief for lack of agreement. In a passing goulash, how can partners regulate their second and third passes profitably when it happens that they unfortunately exchanged cards of the same suit or suits on the first pass? Bridge Intimacies. ULIAN RICE, member of an illustrious bridge family, brother of Dorothy Rice Sims, has been noted for years as a cross-word puzzle constructor, has held two national amateur billiard champion- ships and now is a skilled instructor in contract and auction to various kinds of groups in and around New York City. He is one of those who like to be called upon to prove their statements. One of his favorite assertions is that contract is a more definite test of skill than auction. While playing with two skilled players and one less adept recently, the weaker one questioned his contention. So he kept track of the high cards held. In the next rubber, the side of the weaker player held 56 aces to 28 by the stronger and 43 kings against 41, yet was beaten by 4,500 points. In auction, he maintained, the weaker side would have been certain to win with that pre- ponderance of cards. Auction Problems. "THE king of clubs having been led and won by your ace, after which two rounds of trumps were played—spades— on the second of which the original leader failed to follow suil, how would you plan the balance of the following hand? D UMMY 45 VYAKQ ¢AKQS ¢ o804 - : ECLARER S&AKQIs63 veésa L X L Y %) This hand illustrates what is known in expert circles as the “grand coup.” It is frequently referred to as the prettiest of all “post-graduate” plays. The op- portunities to make it are rare, but it is seldom a difficult one to detect and per- form when the proper circumstances for it exist. In this case the circumstances ar® readily recognizable. With eight trumps in the two cffensive hands, five are held by the adversaries. When the left hand foe fails to follow suit on the second trick, it discloses the fact that the right hand one originally held four of them, including the jack. The second trick leaves him with the jack and a little one as a guard to it. Thus he appears sure to take a trump trick, for there are no more trumps in dummy to lead through him and enable declarer to catch his Jack with the queen. The jack can be caught, however, if declarer can cause the lead to come from dummy on the next to last trick, with himself holding the queen and 10 over the cards of the opponent, whc then will have to play before him. The problem, therefore, is to cause the lead to be in dummy on the next to last trick. This cannot be done if declarer has only trumps in his hand for his last three cards. So he must get rid of scme of his trumps earlier. ' To the fourth trick he leads his little diamond and takes it with the ace. Next a diamond lead by dummy is trumped with the deuce. A heart puts dummy again for another diamond lead, trumped by the six. A second heart gives dummy another diamond lead to be ruffed by the eight. The third heart trick gives dummy the lead again, and he cashes a high diamond, then leads the crucial card, on which the opponent has nothing to play but one of his trumps. If he pnlays the jack, declarer nails it with the queen; if his smaller one, declarer wins with the 10 and drops the jack on his final trick. The trumping of perfectly good cards to cut down the number of trumps in the other hand is the hallmark of the grand coup. When this trumping is done once, the play is called a single grand coup, when twice a double grand coup, when three times a triple grand coup, as in this case. It is well always to consider the chance of making this play when- ever the opponent at the left proves short of trumps and the right hand one has a trump which can be killed only if declarer gets last whack at it. @ The New Problem. hearts led at no trump, the ad- versaries taking the first four tricks and then leading a club, how wculd you plan the balance of the following hands? DUMMY Y6542 D Yv10973 AAKT532 &96 Owen ]olmson. ¢ AK &< eQJI09 HAKQ Continued from Fifteenth Page cuted, they’ll own Pifth avenue,’ propliesied AL .« . Well, now, it wouldn't do to bz t>o exac* in identifications after that, would it? So we'l® call Doc and The Shad rather compositess I think it’s safer to let it go at that. “Butcher Stevens is Judge A. L. Watson of Scranton, Pa. Charlie De Soto is C. A. H. De- Saulles of New York. The Duke of Bilgewater . Poler Fox is Noel Red Dog is M. G. Slugger Jones i . Slush Randolph is . W. of Newark, and why called him Randolph I've quite forgotten. is J. M. Satterfield of Buffale, Canary—sometinigs the Gutter Pup—is Henry K. Dalssll