Forty years without an international title

We are looking at Edgar Kaplan and Norman Kay, who get my vote as the best pair never to win a world title, despite 40 years of trying. They finished second to the Italian Blue Team in both the 1967 Bermuda Bowl and the 1968 World Team Olympiad.

Kay lived in Narberth, Pennsylvania (a suburb of Philadelphia). He worked for Merrill Lynch, retiring as a vice president. He and his wife, Judy, ran a sports memorabilia business and owned a stable of standardbreds (trotters and pacers). Kay was one of the true gentlemen of the game — everybody really liked him. He died in 2002, having won 27 national championships.

This deal occurred during the 1986 Vanderbilt, which Kay and Kaplan won with teammates Bill Root and Richard Pavlicek.

Kaplan (North) opened with a weak no-trump, showing 12-14 points. Since they did not use transfers, Kay forced to game with three spades.

West led the diamond two. After winning with dummy’s king, Kay called for the spade king, which East had to duck to defeat the contract. That was very tough; instead, East won with his ace and led back a diamond.

Kay didn’t give them a second chance. He won with his ace, ruffed his last diamond with dummy’s spade queen and led a heart to his nine, keeping East off play.

Maybe this avoidance play would force out the heart queen; or perhaps the hearts would be 3-3; or, if all else failed, East might have the club ace.

As you can see, the second of these possibilities worked out. Kay’s 10 tricks were four spades, three hearts, two diamonds and a diamond ruff in the dummy.