Tatties O'er the Side by Foxymoron

My friend Victor Silverstone sadly passed away recently at the age of 80. He was well-known to Woodberry members as he played in most London events and I had the pleasure of being at the Camrose and Senior Camrose with him. He was always a pleasure to chat with, in his broad Scottish accent, and I used one of his tips recently in the Lockdown League, playing for Woodberry. West is on lead against 4S, and in the other room led a trump and the contract made.

Victor's advice was to lead the top card in a suit where partner has doubled for the lead. Our auction went, with South dealer, 1S-P-2C*-X-2S-P-4S-All Pass. 2C was artificial and game-forcing and double showed clubs, so I led the queen!

Red suit leads are immediately fatal, and declarer can succeed easily as well on a trump lead as he can just play a diamond to the jack or king after drawing trumps. However, the queen of clubs is a dagger to the heart of the contract and now East has safe club exits after trumps are drawn. I am sure the opponents thought I was self-kibitzing but I wasn't.

I remember Victor saying, on a similar hand. "Leid th' hi'est caird or it wull be tatties o'er the side". This is wonderful Scottish Slang and gives our tip for the day.

"Lead the highest card in the suit in which partner asks for the lead, or it will go pear-shaped." And the last expression is much newer, from pilots in the Air Force who performed loops which were imperfect in the air. If they weren't round, they were "pear-shaped", as mentioned in the 1983 book Air Force South Atlantic.

RIP Victor. You were a great player, but an even greater person. 

His funeral is at Carpender's Park, Lawn Cemetery Watford at 11 am on 13 December.

Hehu by Foxymoron

The digit eight is the most common number within pi, with four the second most common. Interestingly, or boringly dependent on your view of maths, the numbers 2, 4 and 8 are the only ones that occur more than 10% of the time. Only slightly, mind you, as there are 100,000,791,469 eights in the first trillion digits of pi.

The Hehu, or Ogdoad, is in the dictionary as a set of eight things. Considered to have come into creation before the world did, the Ogdoad consists of four couples—eight individual deities—who balance one another and the nature of the cosmos.  Each pair correlated with one of the primary elements of the universe in the Egyptian belief system, i.e., water, air, light, and time. 

Eight-card suits in bridge are certainly not the most common, but they are more frequent than nine-card suits. Voids are even more common of course. Three voids - and three eight-card suits - on a single hand is very rare, but it occurred in the SIMs this Tuesday

In our room East overcalled 4H over 1D, and I had little choice but to bid 4S. North felt that he could not move on, but East added one more for the road and South tried again with 5S. North was now happy to have a second bite at the cherry and added a sixth. Six Spades could not be beaten as three hearts could be ruffed in dummy. The origin of the phrase is 19th Century, and apple was later replaced by cherry for no particular reason.

And "one more for the road", comes from Frank Sinatra:

We're drinkin', my friend

To the end of a brief episode

Make it one for my baby

And one more for the road

In this room, a club lead would have defeated 6D, but naturally enough East tried to cash the ace of hearts. Now the diamond suit is interesting. A singleton ace is no good to you, so you need to find a singleton queen, and, mirabile dictu, there she is. Ian Macleay made the right play to bring home his thin slam.

Triple or Progressive?

 An interesting squeeze which led to two extra tricks occurred at the Woodberry Weekend.

We were busy debating whether it was called a triple squeeze or a progressive squeeze until Nigel helpfully pointed out that they were just two different names for the same thing!

East opened 1NT. South overcalled 3 diamonds. West then bid 4NT, which East raised to 6NT.

The contract looked difficult as there were only 10 top tricks.

South led 5 of diamonds, won by declarer with the Ace.

East then led a spade, unsuccessfully finessing the queen.

North then returned a spade to the Ace.

Declarer then cashed two diamonds, discarding a heart from hand.

North discarded a spade on the King, but when the Queen was led, she had a problem as she was guarding all three remaining suits.

In practice, a club was discarded.

Declarer could now cash 4 club tricks, and on the 4th club North was again squeezed in the major suits.

The heart discard enabled the slam to be made.