Contract Bridge

It is said that luck is eliminated when you play duplicate bridge, but, alas, there is more poetry than truth in that assertion.

Consider this deal from the match between the United States and France at the 1960 World Bridge Olympiad. The bidding went as shown when Victor Mitchell and Morton Rubinow were North-South for the U.S.

West led a diamond, and Rubinow, looking at 12 highly probable tricks -- three spades, a heart, three diamonds and five clubs -- played low from dummy. East won with the queen and returned a diamond, and the slam very quickly went down the drain.

It is hard to point the finger of blame at Rubinow. Just about anyone worth his salt would have made the same play and gone minus 100.

When Pierre Jais and Roger Trezel were North-South for France, the bidding followed an entirely different route:

Ira Rubin, West, opened three spades, but the renowned French pair found their way to six notrump anyway. The four-notrump bid by Jais was merely a raise in notrump and had nothing to do with Blackwood.

Rubin led the jack of spades,

and Trezel did not have any difficulty making six notrump. He won the spade with the king, cashed the A-K of clubs, led the jack of diamonds and finessed.

The finesse lost to the

queen, but Trezel had 12 icecold tricks. France thus gained 1,540 points on the deal, due largely to the 6-1 diamond division that had played such a critical role against six clubs at the first table.

Tomorrow: The law of probabilities.