Contract Bridge

This extraordinary deal occurred in a match between Argentina and Italy in the 1963 world team championship. It was played on BridgeO- Rama before a huge and enthusiastic audience.

Marcos Santamarina and Luis Attaguile were NorthSouth for Argentina when the sequence shown took place. North’s pass of six hearts, an obvious cuebid, was astounding, to say the least. Spades had previously been agreed upon as trump, and South’s diamond and heart bids merely showed first- round control of those suits. The heart cuebid might have been based on A-x, or even a void!

Perhaps North was so deeply engrossed in trying to decide whether or not to bid seven spades that he did not realize, when he passed, that South’s last bid had been six hearts, not six spades.

Whatever the reason, Santamarina’s pass was surely one of the most serendipitous bids ever made in a world championship event. And when the missing trumps divided 3- 3, Attaguile had no difficulty scoring 12 tricks, collecting four hearts, six spades and the two side aces. Six spades almost surely would have failed with normal play, as evidenced by what happened when Italy later played the hand in that contract.

Against six spades, the Argentine West also led a club. Declarer took the ace, discarding a diamond, drew trump, cashed the A- K- Q of hearts, then played the ace and a low diamond.

South could have made the slam by playing the diamond eight from dummy, but there was no way he could know that East had the king and that it was now singleton. After playing the queen and losing it to the king, declarer later lost another diamond trick to go down one, giving Argentina a 1,030- point pickup.