Deceptive defences

In the National Point a Board teams we made too many silly errors to qualify for the final, but I enjoyed these two defences, where my innocent-looking partner managed to pull the wool over declarer's eyes. The first hand was particularly satisfying as it was against Jeremy Dhondy and Brian Callaghan, half of team that won the event.

East was declarer in 3♠ after West had opened a fashionable 1♣ on his balanced 11 count. Ann led a heart to my ace and I returned a heart to declarer's king. Now came a trump to the queen, and a trump back to the king and ace. Ann exited with a low club and declarer was conned into playing low, so I could win and play back a heart to promote Ann's nine of trumps. One down, and the only plus score on the North-South cards. Not that it did us much good as we lost the other three boards in the match...

The auction had marked declarer with short hearts, and Ann had not doubled the fourth-suit 2♦, so I tried leading ♥8. A couple of weeks ago in the Knight Cup, I tried a heart lead after a similar auction and blew two tricks when declarer had 10 x. This time it was more successful.

Declarer played the queen from dummy, which was allowed to win. Now declarer came to hand with a diamond and took a slightly anti-percentage play in clubs by leading low to the 10 and Ann's queen. Ann returned a heart to my ace and I continued with the 10. Thinking that I must have started with ♥ A K 10 8, declarer made the mistake of covering so that Ann was able to make all her hearts and the contract was two down.

Would declarer have got this right if Ann had covered with the king at trick 1? He should do - we were playing fourth highest leads and I would not have led the 8 from ♥ A 10 9 8, so he should be able to sniff out the actual position.

Knight Cup 2014

In the Knight Cup we were leading at half time but slipped away in the second half to finish just above half way. We were unfortunate in that the opponents held most of the cards for the second half, but there were also some self-inflicted wounds. Against the eventual winners we had the chance for two tops but managed to turn them into two bottoms - this was my contribution to the debacle.

4♣ and 4NT were explained as Gerber with 4♥ showing one ace and 5♦ showing one king.  Partner led ♥6 (second highest from bad suits) which declarer won in hand and played on clubs. In with the ace, I naively assumed that declarer would have the ace of spades (otherwise, why bother to ask for kings?) and returned a heart, letting through an overtrick instead of taking it two off.

Subsequent analysis in the cold light of day showed that a spade return is the only chance to defeat the contract, but it will concede an overtrick (this was a pairs event) if declarer's hand is something like

♠Ax  ♥AKJ  ♦KJxx  ♣Q10xx

C'est la vie. At least I have a new hand for my collection of loony Gerber auctions, which has grown to a considerable size over the years.

Writing up this hand reminded me of an article in the EBU magazine a few years ago, which reported on a tour by the Australian expert Ron Klinger where he visited various English bridge clubs. One of the locals asked him for his views on Gerber, and Ron suggested that he try giving up Gerber for a time to see if his slam bidding improved. "How long would you suggest for this experiment", asked the punter. "About 30 years."