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.