A.K. Bhurgri

The Bridge hocus-pocus

Bridge has many dimensions and gives the players multiple gadgets with which they can choose their best options to buckle down the opponents and have their way to success. Many a times the declarer hits the winning key and succeeds. But when the odds are really stacked against him giving him little or no breathing space, the players with grit and aplomb do not give up that easily. They use every, tactic possible in taking the game away from the opponents. One big weapon in this Bridge armory is deception.

A lot of players really love to be in a position where by using deception in the shape of a red herring or a well concealed ruse, they not only succeed in swinging the odds back in their favor but keep enjoying the sight of red ears that the opponents show in the embarrassment of having been swindled so smartly.

Our illustration for today is such a study of what Kelsay has so aptly called ‘hocus-pocus’ north south are in a contract of 6C bid as under:

North’s 5NT was the Josephine grand slam force asking partner to bid the grand holding 2 top honors of trumps and little slam if holding only 1.

The opening lead from west is the 9H. No! This is not a problem of declarer play deception but rather a defense swindle of the highest class. As east you hold the following cards and see the following dummy spread before you on your right.

Place your self in the east seat and see if you can match your defense with the American expert who had a premonition of disaster. You can well imagine that the declarer has no loser in diamonds or hearts since he could not be holding more than 2 hearts for his failure to support his partner’s suit. South has already cue bid the spade ace by his bid of 4S. Therefore, the play hinges on the tackling of the trumps pretty well. Here it is too obvious to even an average player that the sure shot safety play in trumps is mandatory holding 10 combined cards. This is done by leading a low trump from dummy and covering any card of east with the next higher card. Here the 3C would be covered by the 4C, the jack with the ace. This standard safety play ensures that there can only be at most a loss of only 1 trump trick and no more.

Well – what can you do holding east’s cards? Now see how with a little imagination of Bridge deception technique east lured south into the losing line? How? By dropping the QH on the KH at trick 1 blitzkrieg in splits second. Can you imagine the devastating effect of this swindle on the declarer who held the following hand as south:

Naturally everyone in the south seat would take the QH to be a singleton and thus shun the safety play that otherwise was necessary to ensure the contract for fear that if west wins the lead, the inevitable and imminent heart ruff would sink the contract. Every declarer would thus go for the AC and hope trumps break normally. But behold east’s joy when declarer, quite shaken up, next finds that the red damsel after all was not single but merely made to look so by east with his Bridge hocus-pocus!

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North               South


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    7               A J 8


A K J 10 5            4 8


       A K          Q 8 3


 Q 8 6 5 2     A 10 9 7 4


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