MADEIRA
BRIDGE
Pandemonium
Andrew Robson
Dealer North North-South Vulnerable ALL modern bridge tournaments use 'bid- ding boxes'. Instead of saying your bid, the intonation of which can convey illicit infor- mation to partner (subconsciously or oth- erwise), you take the card with the desired bid on it from the bidding box and place it on the table. Whilst reducing the sociabili- ty of the game, these bidding cards make spectating easier and reviews of the bid- ding unnecessary — all the bids of the auc- tion stay on the table until the play begins. Watch the pandemonium resulting from South pulling out the wrong bidding card from the National Teams in Leeds: South West North East pass
2V (!) pass 24 pass 34 pass 444 pass 6• double all pass South had intended to place the 2• bid- ding card on the table with his first response, and looked with horror as he realised that he had shown partner his three small Vs in preference to his seven solid •s. Partner miraculously got the message and allowed partner to play 6• as opposed to 6V — preference to partner's first suit with equal support (or lack of) is generally correct. West, expecting a large set holding such good Vs (declarer's first bid suit), had doubled 6*. He led a trump, to cut downy ruffs in the dummy. Declar- er ran off all seven trumps, keeping all dummy's 4s and East, thinking he had to cling on to all his Vs (declarer having shown five or six Vs in the bidding), dis- carded 4s; that was all declarer needed: dummy's 4s had become good and declar- er chalked up his improbable slam (with seven • tricks and five 4s). The only way he could have induced the misguided opening lead by West and the incorrect discarding by East that enabled him to make his contract was to have bid 2V!
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