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The Auction
Pollyanna briskly opened the 5–loser North hand 1♠, and Candide passed in tempo. Charlie Brown responded with a Jacoby 2NT showing a balanced game–going hand with 4–card support. Pollyanna rebid 3♣ to show her shortness, and with his soft values and the club honors likely wasted opposite a singleton or void, Charlie Brown should have scaled back expectations and settled for game. Instead, Pollyanna heard a rose–colored 4NT keycard ask, and playing 1430 she responded 5♦ showing zero or three. Unless she had rebid 3♣ with a stiff king, it seemed near–impossible for her to have opened missing three keycards, so Charlie Brown assumed possession of all five. Most would have been content to bid the small slam, but Charlie Brown continued with a 5♥ trump queen ask! Holding the queen but no outside king, Pollyanna signed off in 6♠, and Charlie Brown finally subsided.
The Play of the Hand
From the auction, Candide knew the 9–card trump fit included the top three honors and selected a safe 8♠ for the opening lead. The dummy came down, and Pollyanna saw that Charlie Brown might have modestly overestimated his values. She could see only two potential losers, but where were the winners to come from? A dummy reversal featuring two club ruffs in the closed hand would net six trump tricks, and driving out the ♥K could set up three heart winners, but the minor suit aces would bring the trick count only to eleven. Perhaps an endplay or some other miracle would provide a twelfth. But first, she needed to attend to business.
Pollyanna won the opening lead in dummy with the ♠A, cashed the ♣A, and ruffed a club with the ♠J. She crossed to the ♠10 in dummy, trumps nicely splitting 2–2, then she ruffed the last club in hand. There was no way back to dummy to attempt the heart finesse, so she cashed the ♥A and continued a low heart. Candide won the ♥K perforce and found himself inextricably endplayed. On a club return, Pollyanna could sluff a diamond in dummy and ruff in hand, while a diamond would allow the ♦Q to score.
Click here to view or play the deal in the BBO Handviewer. Use the Next button to advance trick by trick or the Play button to choose your own cards and explore alternate lines of play.
Closing Thoughts
Dear Reader, Pollyanna was very lucky to find the ♥K doubleton in Candide’s hand. If there had been a third heart, then upon winning the king Candide could have safely exited, and Pollyanna would ultimately lose a diamond to sink the slam. As it happened, the unfortunate philosophers were well and truly fixed.
True to form, Pangloss put an optimistic, teleological gloss on the episode:
It is demonstrable that things cannot be otherwise than as they are; for all being created for an end, all is necessarily for the best end.
Candide had finally had enough:
Only fools admire everything in an author of reputation.
All the best,
Rex
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