BRIDGE

What type of player is your most feared opponent?

There are many excellent technical players that rarely if ever make a cardplay error who will always pick a deal clean, declaring or defending, to take every trick that isn’t nailed down and some that are!

And solid, dependable types who succeed through discipline and reliability in the bidding will always fare well at any level of competition.

But for any given deal, the player I least like to come up against is one who can be a loose cannon in the auction but is also a top-notch declarer who will often find a way to rescue victory from the imminent defeat his bidding may have authored.

For sure, South’s stir-the-pot-up preemptive overcall on the ratty Jack-high suit could reasonably be called “loose” but his partner couldn’t take a joke and raised to game.

Even after the spade lead into his ace- Queen tenace, South was left facing the seemingly doomed prospect of losing two diamonds and two trumps.

But years of similar bidding had taught this South a thing or two about deception: he won the spade in hand to cross to a high club in dummy and call for the Queen of hearts. ( Yes, this happened in the longago times of face-to-face bridge!).

Hoping to promote his ten, East covered the Queen with his King as so many would.

Great was the fall thereon as the defenders really took the first trump trick but a later finesse against East’s guarded ten delivered the game and gave South yet another story to regale his fans with!