Sometimes A Fantasy…

    By Rowen Bell, Oak Park IL

Do you ever wake up to discover you’ve been dreaming about bridge?

These days, I play more bridge in my dreams than I do while awake. Unfortunately, in the cold light of day the bits and pieces I can reconstruct from my bridge dreams seem to make much less sense than they did while I was sleeping.

For example, the other day I woke up with a vivid memory from a bridge dream:  I held S AKx H void D KJT987x C AKx, and somehow found myself in five clubs redoubled, where I made an overtrick. To my chagrin, however, in my dream this was a bad result!  When I compared with my imaginary teammates, I found that they had defended against three clubs redoubled and taken no tricks.

Such results are truly the stuff of nightmares.

As the day went on, however, my attention kept returning to this “dream hand”. Was this simply another impossibility caused by randomly misfiring neurons?  Or, was there any way in which this particular bridge dream could actually have happened?

Maybe – just maybe – the part of my dream that I couldn’t recall went something like this:

(1)  Strong. (Yes, apparently I dream in Precision. This shouldn’t surprise anyone who knows me.)

(2)  Negative.

(3)  Shows a desire to compete, asks partner to bid 3C.

(4)  Natural, unwilling to be passed in 3C.

(5)  Weaker than bidding 3C directly over 2H.

West’s penalty double is a little brazen, but:  North apparently wanted to sign off in 3C; West knows trumps are breaking badly; and East’s simple overcall in this sequence generally shows sound values. South’s redouble is more poker than bridge.

West leads the ace of hearts, ruffed by declarer. With West likely to hold four trumps for the penalty double, declarer starts preparations for a trump coup by ruffing a diamond at trick two. A club to the ace confirms the 4-0 split, followed by another diamond ruff and a club to the king. Declarer leads a third diamond at trick six; West discards a heart (ruffing in front of dummy being unattractive) and dummy pitches a heart.

Say East wins the ace of diamonds at trick six, leaving the following seven-card position:

Looking at dummy, many Easts would find a spade shift appealing here, relative to the alternative of cashing the heart king (and establishing dummy’s queen). Declarer wins a spade shift and starts pumping good diamonds through West. If West ever ruffs, then declarer overruffs in dummy, draws the last trump, returns to the closed hand with a spade, and claims: Making six. If West refuses to ruff, then the trump coup matures at trick twelve -- North and West each come down to two trumps and South is on lead, so again declarer makes six. Cashing the heart king at trick seven prevents the overtrick, but thereafter the play continues along similar lines.

However, the defense can prevail:  East needs to refuse to win trick six. When declarer persists with another diamond at trick seven, East’s previous holdup enables West to pitch another heart, reducing to a singleton. Now, after winning the ace of diamonds at trick seven, East cashes the king of hearts and plays the jack of hearts. If dummy pitched a heart at trick seven, then East’s heart is good so West can pitch while dummy ruffs, promoting a trump trick for West. Alternatively, if dummy pitched a spade at trick seven, then West can ruff the jack of hearts while dummy is forced to follow suit.

(Setting a contract by giving a ruff in a suit that partner supported and that declarer ruffed at trick one – this is itself the stuff of dreams!)

At the other table, my imaginary opponents were not playing a strong club system and the auction proceeded along very different lines:

Although South has a four-loser hand, the jump-shift into a strong three-card suit is a little aggressive with a void in partner’s bid suit. (Of course, it’s hard to arrive in 3C redoubled if opener rebids 3D!) The rest of the auction is equally questionable, with East finding an inopportune time to make a lead-directing double on a void, and a perplexed West having nowhere to run.

Once again, the lead is a red ace, ruffed in the closed hand, but here North, not South, is declaring. Declarer plays a club to dummy’s ace at trick two, revealing the 4-0 split, and plays the king of diamonds at trick three. When the queen appears under the king, declarer draws trumps (including the marked finesse of the ten) and claims all the tricks.

So there you have it:  Five clubs redoubled making six at one table, and three clubs redoubled making seven at the other. As a well-known Long Island troubadour (Billy Joel) once said:  “Sometimes a fantasy is all you need…..”