Contract Bridge

It is easy to become confused when you play against an artificial bidding system. Most players don't encounter this difficulty because, in the groups in which they play, a spade bid shows spades, diamonds means diamonds, and so on.

However, when you play in tournaments, artificial bids are fairly common. How much they gain in the long run is questionable. Here is a case where an artificial bid was successful, but for a peculiar reason.

The deal was played in a match between Great Britain and Italy in 1954. Nothing much happened at the first table, where Terence Reese and Boris Schapiro got to four spades as shown. Reese made six instead of five as the result of a defensive error.

It was at the second table that the fireworks occurred. There, Michele Giovine and Mario Franco held the North-South cards for Italy. They were playing the highly artificial Marmic system.

Giovine opened the South hand with one diamond, a strong bid that had nothing to do with diamonds. Franco responded with one spade, which had nothing to do with spades. It showed a king and some additional values. Eventually, Franco and Giovine arrived at six spades.

Adam Meredith (West) led the jack of spades and thereby handed declarer the contract. Declarer won with the queen, cashed the A-K of hearts and ruffed a heart, establishing dummy's two remaining hearts. He then crossed to the ten of spades and discarded two losers on the established hearts to make the slam.

It was an unfortunate lead, all right, but it was doubly unfortunate because Meredith had led out of turn! Due to the artificial one-spade bid, the actual declarer was North, so East should have led.

As it was, North accepted Meredith's lead out of turn, which was his privilege, and so made the slam.