CONTRACT BRIDGE

Dear Mr. Becker: The most terrible things have been happening to me lately. I don’t claim to be a first-rate player, like lots of other people do, and in fact I’m sure I’m not, but somehow or other, more often than not, I manage to come out ahead.

But recently I’ve been in a dreadful losing streak, and it’s starting to get under my skin. I not only lose with bad hands, but I also lose with good ones. For example, take a look at what happened to me on this deal.

I was South and opened the bidding with three notrump. I realize that this was not a perfect bid with my hand since I didn’t have a genuine diamond stopper. But under the circumstances, it seemed to me the best bid to make.

Unfortunately, it turned out that West had a moderately good diamond suit, and he proceeded to cash the first 10 tricks, forcing me to discard one good trick after another. Not only that, but when West led his last diamond, I was holding the K-Q of spades, ace of hearts and ace of clubs and had to make a discard. (East’s three cards at this point were the A-10-9 of spades.)

I couldn’t throw a spade, which would have given East the last three tricks, so I discarded the ace of clubs. With great delight, West then cashed the eight of clubs, and I found myself squeezed again!

This time I discarded the ace of hearts, whereupon West cashed the eight of hearts and led a spade to his partner’s ace.

So the upshot was that I wound up losing all 13 tricks to go down nine — 900 points — even though I had started with 26 high-card points!

Of course, I realize you might doubt that this hand ever occurred, and I certainly wouldn’t blame you for thinking that. As a matter of fact, if you look at the date, you might even find an additional reason for disbelieving my story. Cordially yours, Constant Reader.