Horror Vacui by Foxymoron

The above expression is often translated as "nature hates a void", a concept in Physics called plebism (nothing to do with Andrew Mitchell!). It is attributed to Aristotle and means that there is no such thing as a void. Plato also thought that, as a void is nothing, it cannot exist!

There were certainly plenty of voids on yesterday's hands, and one of these allowed a grand slam to be made. Someone dealing many million hands with Bridge Analyser believes that only 2% of hands allow a grand slam to be made, so an average of about 0.42 grand slams in a set of the 21 boards we play each week. Yesterday two grands were makable.

Bridge players do not generally hate voids, but judging what they are worth is not easy. On the following hand, Al and Judy certainly did hate the fact that North had a spade void, but as EW had 11 spades between them this was very likely:

A competitive and lively auction was judged well by Bill Linton, South. West thought 6H was bid as a sacrifice so he doubled, but the spade void in dummy and the singleton club with South meant that there was no defence. A rare score of +1210 for NS was a top.

The other hand with two voids was the following, well bid by Jim O'Donoghue and Ian Macleay to a small slam, even though 7D can be made by ruffing out the hearts. This only needs the hearts no worse than 5-2 as well, so is a pretty good grand, even though EW have only 19 points.

West might bid 6C instead of 6D. This is clearly a grand-slam try, and asks for good trumps, but would the message have got across? And it was not necessary, as 6D+1 was a top.

All Roads by Foxymoron

The proverb "All roads lead to Rome" derives from medieval Latin. It first appeared in writing in 1175 by Alain de Lille, a French theologian and poet, whose Liber Parabolarum renders it as 'mille viae ducunt homines per saecula Romam' (a thousand roads lead men forever to Rome).

I thought of the saying yesterday when discussing the auction to 4H on the following hand from the Autumn SIMs. I am pretty sure that all will have played the hand in 4H, but the auctions might well have been different. Playing "Benjy Acol", South can open 2C (or 2D if that shows 8 playing tricks in a suit). The rebid of 4H shows nine or ten tricks, and North will pass.


A slightly different diagram as the booklet and BBO record is "not yet available", but Sally Brock's excellent comments are. If South opens 1H, as I did, North will respond 1S, and South is too strong for 3H, non-forcing, so is pretty much forced to bid 4H. All roads ... Even an attempt to show extras by bidding 3C over 1S will just get preference to hearts when South will bid 4H. All roads ....

All roads do not lead to ten tricks, however ... If West leads a passive trump, declarer can make an easy 11 tricks by leading a spade up after drawing trumps. Andy Conway found the best diamond lead against me. I won in dummy, East playing the king, and drew trumps and led a spade up straight away. Andy had to guess whether I had one or two spades. Some of the time I have two spades, the defence can take three tricks anyway, so I think it is right to win. But Andy and his partner Leonid Balakhchev had a fine win with 69% so it would be churlish to criticise his decision on this board.

Can East help his partner in this decision? Only with some defensive agreements. East has a choice of which heart to play on the first round, and would need an agreement that his heart carding is "linked" to the key suit. He has to diagnose that this is spades, first of all, and then he has to have an agreement that low high in hearts shows an odd number of major suit cards. Armed with this information, West can win the first spade for a good score. However, declarer can avoid this "exchange of information" by only drawing one round of trumps and then playing a spade. Now West has only seen the eight of hearts and doesn't know whether East has a higher or lower one. He will probably assume that the other heart is lower and still duck the first spade, playing his partner for a doubleton. Bridge is a game of "imperfect information" and defence is harder than offence.

The Mechanical Duck by Foxymoron

 There was a remarkable play by the deserved winners of the Woodberry Pairs this week, when Dominic Flint, president of the LMBA, and his wife Pamela Reiss won with a fine score of 69%. I recall Tiger Woods scoring a 69 on a tough course at Bethpage Black, on his way to winning the US Open, and he was being interviewed by the golf journalist Sarah Stirk. "If you had offered me a 69 this morning I would have taken it with pleasure!", said Tiger with a grin.

It is sometimes a mechanical reaction to duck the first round of a suit with the ace. The mechanical duck was invented in 1739 by Jacques de Vaucanson. He was an inventor who created an automaton that was a mechanical duck. The robotic duck would quack, move its head to eat some grain which would appear to digest and after a short time, would discharge a mixture that looked and smelled like duck droppings.

What has this do with bridge?, you might well ask. Well, Pamela found a cunning play to make her game on the following hand, inducing East to make a "mechanical or robotic duck".

The lead of the jack of clubs to her queen gave the contract a bit of a chance, and Pamela made the clever play at trick two of leading the queen of spades from hand. It looked for all the world as if she was hoping to use the king of spades as an entry for a red-suit finesse, and East ducked which does indeed look natural. Now Pamela played the ace of clubs and another club discarding the king of spades. Poor East was helpless. A trump lead picked up the suit for one loser. A diamond allowed the king to be picked up, and a club lead allowed declarer to ruff and later pick up the hearts. Pamela was the only declarer to make 4H, so scored an outright top, and East let through the overtrick late in the play, but that did not cost at all.