Contract Bridge

The scene was the 1979 world team championship in Rio de Janeiro, and the contestants in the final round -- as had happened so many times before -- were Italy and the United States. The U.S. won the match by a very slender margin (253 International Match Points to 248), and this is one of the deals that contributed to the American victory.

The Italian South (Giorgio Belladonna, playing with Vito Pittala) wound up at four diamonds doubled as shown. West (Billy Eisenberg, playing with Edwin Kantar) led the king of clubs and shifted to the K-Q and another heart. East took the ace and returned a club to partner’s ace, and Belladonna ruffed the next club lead.

Declarer now led the spade nine to the queen and played a low trump from dummy. Kantar went up with the ace and returned a fourth round of clubs, creating a trump trick for Eisenberg that put the contract down four -- 700 points (800 in today’s scoring).

This should have resulted

in only a small loss for Italy -Kantar would have scored 600 or 630 points at three notrump -- but the Italian East-West pair at the second table wound up in only a partscore when the bidding went:

West’s opening one-spade

bid with such a terribly weak suit -- shocking by American standards -- was an integral part of the Italian bidding system. On this occasion, though, it caused them to miss a very good three-notrump contract.

West finished with eight tricks to score 110 points, but Italy suffered a net loss of 590 on the deal. This cost them 11 IMPs, which was more than the margin by which the U.S. won the championship.

Tomorrow: Avoiding a harrowing guess.