Cam French

The Oracle




               The Oracle   


                 File:The Oracle (i).gif   

                                                                     (Ode to Kreskin)   



This time you are at a regional tournament, sitting in second place in Swiss Teams awaiting the penultimate match and versus the leaders. You are playing with an expert player you know and trust. You South to bid and hold:








Do you or don’t you?  I consider it close enough that if my hearts were a minor, I would pass. However, they are not and soon my partner made clear his lofty intentions.


South      West       North      East 


1H                     P                   2D*          P

2NT           P            3H #        P

4H*            P           4NT+       P

5C%           P            5H        All Pass


·        2/1= game force

·        3H = slammish

·        4H = not interested

·        4NT = RKCB anway

·        5C = 1430 (one Key card)

·        5H = stop


I awaited the dummy with bated breath.


This is what appeared:










                   ♦ xx



Yikes! This a great game, but the five level is precipitously high. Why has my partner bid so much? Of course he wonders why I open these hands……. Still, he made overtures, and failed to hear the rejection notice.


Mercifully, West on your left leads the Queen of Clubs. Assuming it is from QJ9x then one of your losers has vanished.


How do we play the trump suit? I gave this some thought. After all, that is what this hand is about. Nothing else really matters if you don’t hold the trump losers to one.


I am hardly a technician and had to imagine what I wanted or more accurately – needed the layout to be. That is the key. You imagine what will enable success and play accordingly. All you need to know is what works for you.


I needed KQ alone or KT/QT in the West hand and to guess it right. Is that too much to ask for? Mathematically, yes. Without a computer analysis to determine the odds, I make it 9.5% that a priori, this suit will be played for one loser. (I invite anyone, preferably a simulator freak/geek  to provide statistical evidence which supports or refutes my guess.)


 After a contemplative delay, realizing what I needed,  I led low from hand.


LHO climbed up with the king of hearts without much thought.



My heart raced. He has what I want him to have. I can feel it.


He switched to a diamond. I finessed, it lost. A diamond came back and now I was on the table. The trump suit (which is all that matters) being:




?                                  ?






 Here is what could work for me from this point.


LHO           RHO                             I must play

 (started with)


KQ               10xx                             Low to the Ace.

K10               Qxx                             Jack from Dummy



How about?


K10x*               Qx                            Low to the Ace.


*A new Grosvenor! More on that later.


I assumed that with three trumps, West (especially at this level) would play low and thus the defense would always come to two tricks. Therefore, when he smoothly played the King, in order for me to take advantage of that I needed him to have either:


KQ  or



Does restricted choice apply here? Yes. He has to play an honour from both KQ and K10 but with KQ alone, he would (in theory) play the queen half the time whereas with K10 he is compelled to play the King.


Hoping for a miracle, I led the Jack imagining (OK, praying) this to be the present layout.




10                                 Qx




Right hand opponent played low (a good sign) and I let it run. To my relief it pinned the 10 and now just to draw the last trump, finesse the ten of clubs and claim.


No luck here!


This was the complete hand.



                                               Dlr: South

                      Axx               Vul: All



Qxx            A10x          10xxx

K10                                  Qxx

♦ xxx                                  Kxxx

QJ98x         KJx             xx






At home I checked under suit combinations in The Official Encyclopedias of Bridge and the answer was “run the nine”.  Best defense assumes that a defender with Kx or QX will play low, but with K10 or Q10 will rise in front of the jack.


As for the note about the Grosvenor, I will leave that with you. Suffice it to say it is one of the greatest psychological coups in the game. Google it and you will see. The Grosvenor is to the psycholgy of bridge what Blackwood is to ace asking. Dare I say the “Grove” (as we call it) is a lot more fun and imaginative.


IF for example, if (a very poor or very sinister) West rose from K10X, that would be silly or  a Grosvenor.  However, (given the latter, K10X) if the unsuspecting declarer played as I did to the next trick, the jack would be covered by the now bare queen, and the 10 would be promoted into a trick. Sometimes it pays to play against good opponents. You can count on them to do the right thing. But in this case, it clearly pays to have luck. I saw it as an omen. The Oracle was smiling upon us, well, me at least.


My team mates art the other table led a diamond (best), and declarer did not play the trump suit to maximum advantage. In my (insert adjective here, brilliant/ twisted/delusional/other) mind, that was a sign. We were destined to win the event. What else could it mean?   


 I haven’t seen that many horseshoes since Belmont. It had to be an omen.


Alas, there are only so many four leaf clovers to spread around and in our final match they ran counterclockwise; aka  – the other way.


Some omen.



Some Oracle.











 *Just kidding.



















Leave a comment

Your comment