Take the plunge
Susanna Gross
Among the keenest bridge players I know are Harold Pinter and Antonia Fraser. The other day they told me about an extraordinary hand that Harold picked up recently. He was dealer, and thought long and hard before bidding. ‘It was a real Pinter pause,’ recalled Antonia. ‘We were all wondering what on earth he was going to say and then suddenly.... ’ ‘Finally,’ corrected Harold, taking up the story, ‘I just thought... “oh, fuck it”. And I bid six diamonds.’ His instinct turned out to be right — he brought the slam home.
Even experts have to rely on ‘oh-fuck-it’ judgments sometimes; no matter how scientific your bidding methods may be, there are moments when you just have to take the plunge. How could Harold possibly have found out whether his partner held exactly the cards he needed for slam? Here was his hand (South): N/S Vulnerable Contract: 6◆ Dealer South West led the ♠ J. The slam didn’t look too promising when dummy came down. The problem, of course, was that dummy had no entry. But fortune favours the brave, and Harold had his first piece of luck when he laid down the ◆A, felling West’s ◆K. What were his chances now? Could he possibly gain access to dummy or play clubs for only one loser? If West held both the king and queen of clubs, he could simply unblock the ♠AK and ♥AK and exit with a low club. But there was another chance: West might hold honour-doubleton in clubs and fail to unblock his honour when Harold cashed the ♣A. This was the option Harold went for; after drawing trumps he immediately cashed the ♣A to make it more difficult for West to find the farsighted play of unblocking his honour. Next, Harold cashed the ♠AK and ♥AK and exited with a low club. West’s ♣ Q won (East obviously couldn’t overtake it or dummy’s ♣J would be high), and West had no choice but to play one of the majors. Harold was finally in dummy to discard his two losing clubs on dummy’s major-suit queens.
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