August 2018 - 22

Naming Names

A look at player names and bridge curiosities.
Sometimes all
that matters is
that you are born
with the right
name and form the right partnership.
When Phil King and Cameron Small
played together in the English Premier
League, their appellation of King-
Small made me think of a short suit.
Japanese international Akio Kurokawa
doesn't even need a partner to make me
think of a shortish suit. You will see his
first name fairly frequently; indeed you
will come across it a little later on in
this article. Is there an ACBL member
out there called Singleton, and do they
play with someone called King, Queen,
Jack or Honor?
It is a bridge curiosity that a 4-4 fit
will sometimes play better than a 5-4
fit. Look at the following hands:
♠AQ98
♥ K J 10 7 6
♦ 10 4
♣A6

♠K754
♥AQ85
♦A75
♣98

If the spades break 3-2, you can make
more tricks in spades than hearts. You
are West, at the controls in 4♠. Say you
get a diamond lead. You win with the
ace, draw three rounds of trumps and
run the hearts, throwing a club from
dummy. Now you can ruff a club and
concede a diamond, making 12 tricks.
In hearts, you can only ever make 11
tricks; five hearts, four spades and two
aces. The difference is that, playing in
hearts, you can't generate an extra trick
by getting a ruff in the short hand.
We've seen it can be advantageous
to play in the lesser fit. The Vondracek
Phenomenon (first written about by
Felix Vondracek in The Bridge World
in 1956) is cut from the same cloth. It
can sometimes be right to play in the
weaker of two equal-length trump fits.

22 Bridge Bulletin August 2018

cuebid - take your pick.

You are West again.
♠ A K 10
♥432
♦643
♣AK65

BY SIMON COCHEME

♠QJ653
♥AK976
♦-
♣432

North opens 1♦ and your partner
bids 2♦, a Michaels cuebid, showing
the majors. Counterintuitively, you
should choose to play in hearts not
spades - on this layout, anyway. You
can actually make 12 tricks in hearts,
so long as the trumps break 3-2. North
leads the ♦A. You ruff and play two top
hearts. Now leave the trump winner
outstanding and play on spades, starting with your Kurokawa holding (did
you spot it?). The opposition can take
their trump trick when they like, but
they can't prevent you discarding your
two low clubs and then ruffing dummy's ♣4 with your ♥4. In hearts, you
have to lose a heart, and so you only
need to draw two rounds of trumps. In
spades, you have to draw three rounds
of trumps, and that leaves you with a
heart loser and a club loser.
I fear I may take some flak around
the clubs as players seek out their
lesser fits and bid their weaker suits.
If your opponent looks like the sort of
intelligent person who has read this
magazine, you may be in for a good
result or two.
Mention of the Michaels cuebid reminds me that I have sometimes seen
the convention written as a Michael's
cuebid, as though the inventor's name
was Michael. The inventor was Mr.
Michaels and so there shouldn't be
an apostrophe. Or should there? Mr.
Michaels's first name was Michael,
so a Michael's cuebid is not incorrect.
Or is it? Michael Michaels was known
as Mike, so the choice seems to be
between a Michaels cuebid and Mike's

Ann Luther (1897-1960) was a
silent-movie actress. Who can ever
forget "The Scarlet Lady" (1915) and
"The Island of Desire" (1917)? She
was the fourth wife of vaudevillian
Edward Gallagher (1873-1929) and,
as Ann Gallagher, became famous for
the Ann Gallagher finesse. She was
playing bridge in New York, the story
goes, and she had a two-way finesse for
the queen of trumps, with something
like ♠A J 10 9 in hand and ♠K 8 7 6
in dummy. She played dummy's ♠6 to
her jack, and it won the trick. She then
finessed again the other way, running
the ♠10 round to her right-hand opponent's ♠Q. She is variously reported
to have said (before taking the second
finesse), "Let's see if I am really lucky,"
and/or (after the second finesse failed),
"Well, they say finesses only work half
the time."
In 1983, Alan Truscott wrote in his
column in The New York Times about
a deal that someone had concocted
in which the Ann Gallagher two-way
finesse was the correct technical play:
Dlr: North ♠ K 3 2
Vul: E-W ♥ A
♦K765
♣AKQJ2
♠Q754
♠6
♥ K Q J 10 9
♥432
♦ 10 4
♦AQJ983
♣43
♣987
♠ A J 10 9 8
♥8765
♦2
♣ 10 6 5
West
Pass
Pass
All Pass

North
1♣
2♦
3♠

East
Pass
Pass
Pass

South
1♠
3♣
4♠
Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of August 2018
