400 by Foxymoron

The trick-taking game 400 is popular in Lebanon and parts of the Middle East including Syria and Jordan. I played it when I was in Beirut once. It is not as good a game as bridge, but well worth looking up on the internet. If you plan a holiday in Damascus or Aleppo then knowledge of the game will stand you in good stead.

We had the misfortune in Tuesday's duplicate to concede 400 on consecutive boards against Richard Creamer and Graham Horscroft, helping them to a fine win in the pairs. Neither result "troubled the scorers", an expression from cricket which first appeared in The Cambridge Review in 1890. We could have done better on both boards, but whatever we did was going to be a poor score.

We had a normal enough auction Pass-Pass-1H-Pass-1NT-All Pass. A diamond lead would help declarer, but Richard Creamer did well to lead the eight of hearts. I could rise in dummy and play a second heart, but North's diamond switch would beat me. Instead, I ran it round to the ten and led a club up. The passive heart lead had suggested to me that South would have longer clubs, so this seemed a good bet, but the queen lost to the singleton king and I went four off, rather ignominiously, for -400, as the diamond switch from North took out dummy's entry.

The next board was no better as the opponents scored +400 the normal way:

South opened a 12-14 no-trump, a much better bid than 1H as it gets the balanced nature of his hand across. My partner overcalled 2D, a convention called Multi Landy and now quite popular. He shows a six-card major and less than a penalty double. Graham Horscroft had his punting pole with him (at least that is what he claimed it was) and bid 3NT. It was very hard for West to find the Four Spade sacrifice over this, and that became the final contract. Sadly there was no defence, as declarer was forced to play for two heart honours onside for his ninth trick. 

Fortunately my partner got some of the points back by making 430 on the next board. Unnecessary effort, as it transpired, as 400, as ever, would have been a top.

Clearly Sam Northeast, the Glamorgan batsman and no relation to Marcus North or Ray East, must have read the above blog as he made an astonishing 400 in the cricket match against Leicestershire this week. Other records were set, including the highest first class score, 584, made by a side losing by an innings!