Hands from the past - the Reverend's Coup

The 4th round of the 2007 Gold Cup saw a local derby between two Dorset teams captained by Phil Norman and Keith Bartlett, with the prize for the winner being bragging rights and the chance to take on a seeded team in the round of 32. Keith’s team (Anne Sharples, Barrie Cantello and me) had the better of things, and a couple of weeks later I got an e-mail from Keith that said ‘The draw for round 5 finds us against Allfrey, Forrester, Robson & Bakshi. No trouble then! After we beat them, we probably get Peter Lee's team from Surrey, and then Byrne of Manchester in the quarter-finals.’ In spite of Keith’s optimism, our match against Allfrey was a bit like Weymouth playing Chelsea in the 4th round of the FA Cup. With the bridge correspondents of two national newspapers in the team, the opponents had arranged for duplimated boards with hand records, so that details of any interesting hands could be made available for the delectation of readers of The Times and the Daily Telegraph, not to mention the Dorset Coup. Although we did not manage a giant killing, conceding when 48 imps down after 40 boards, we did have our moments. Here is a hand where Barrie Cantello (aka the Reverend), perhaps inspired by playing in an old rectory, came up with a coup that I had never met before, either in print or at the table. I doubt if Tony Forrester had seen it either, as it caused him to go down in a cold game.

	♠ A9752 ♥ Q532 ♦ K103 ♣ J
♠ Q10 ♥ 64 ♦ A986 ♣ 97653		♠ KJ864 ♥ A8 ♦ QJ75 ♣ A10
	♠ 3 ♥ KJ864 ♦ 42 ♣ KQ842

Forrester declared four hearts after Barrie had opened one spade as east. I led a spade which Forrester won with dummy’s ace to play a club. Barrie took the ace and cashed the ace of trumps. If he had continued with the obvious play of another trump, I am sure that Forrester would have made the contract by playing a top club (throwing a diamond in dummy) and ruffing a club. When the 5-2 club break is revealed, declarer is a trick short but he can ruff a spade back to hand and lead a diamond towards the king for his tenth trick. But after Barrie had taken the ace of hearts he switched to a spade, convincing Forrester (and everyone else at the table) that he had started with a singleton ace of trumps. Forrester ruffed the spade and thought that he might have a winning line on a cross ruff, so he cashed the king of clubs throwing a diamond from dummy. The fall of the ten of clubs was suspicious, but surely it was safe to cash the queen of clubs as East could not have any more trumps. It was something of a shock when Barrie ruffed with a card he could not possibly have – a trump – and played a diamond to my ace for one down. So now you know the Reverend’s coup – cash the ace of trumps when holding A x or A x x and switch to another suit. Declarer is bound to play you for a singleton ace. 

Only one hand from this match ended up in the national press, and even that was not quite truthful. 

 

 I was the West who led the 'dubious' eight of diamonds, but declarer (Robson) did not actually play as described in the article and went one down. Not that it really mattered, as Forrester and Bakshi were allowed to play in four hearts at the other table for a big gain.