Rubber Bridge bidding is in more than one way different and more aggressive than duplicate Bridge. Strange plays and bidding have come to light, none more interesting than the one taken from the Cannes club where the play is extremely variable. Sitting South you hold.
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10 9 4
10 9 8 7 6 4 3
5
65
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North, your partner passes-making you alert to the fact that east west have a great potential for the little slam and maybe possibly the grand. As expected your RHO (east) opens the strong 2C. At this stage, every south will think of preempting to muddy the waters and prevents EW from reaching their fit suit to bid the slam. So south intervened with 3H. From here you cannot imagine how beserk the bidding proceeded with west holding:
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8 6
-
A K 1 0 9 8 6 4
10 8 7 4
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He thought west to cue bid 4H. North passed and east holding the following hand went in a trance. His thinking was that south has made a psychic bid and to the glee of south, west passed his partner's bid of 4H. North and east held as under:
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North East
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Q J 5 3 2 1 A K 7
J 5 2 A K Q
Q J 7 5 3
J 9 2 A K Q 3
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On the 5D lead, south managed to score a spade and 4 trumps for 2 down. Both west and east are to blame for not bidding the straight forward bid of 5D and east for a assuming so early that west was bidding his suit and that south had psyched. A NT contract would have yielded all 13 tricks for a grand slam.
Let us now recall a somewhat similar bid of deception made in the European Championship at Ostend in 1965 where east opened the strong 2 clubs and south holding a yarborough with a singleton spade overcalled the psychic bid of 4S. North holding some support for spades kept silent until EW went on to reach the grand slam in some other suit.
Now, north who was Jonathan Cansino sacrificed in 7S based on his partner's 4S bid. Guess what? The contract went 8 down for - 2000 which was made worse for their team mates in the other rooms reached only a small slam whereas the grand was on. South, John Collinge was reprimanded for his obnoxious 4S bid with the British NPC declaring that Collinge would never play another match for Britian under his captaincy.
Sometimes the pressure situation gets a player so bogged down that he makes a blunder which results in his team losing the championship. Our next illustration is from 1985 Common Market Bridge Championship with Britian pitted against France. At love all the bidding went as follows on this deal:
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North West East South
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A J 5 3 10 4 8 Q 9 7 6 2
A Q J 10 8 4 3 9 7 6 5 K 2
J 4 9 3 K Q 7 6 5 A 10 8 2
A K 6 5 Q 9 8 7 2 10 4 3 J
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The bidding with France as north south went as under:
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S W N E
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- - 1C 1D
1S P 4S P
4NT P 5C P
7S All Pass
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This was standard bidding. North's raise to 4S implied no singleton for a splinter bid. South took a chance apprehending well in advance that a diamond loser make crop up in the grand. The dummy confirmed his fears on the lead of 9D.
As south, can you see a wayout for the grand to make avoiding the diamond loser. In the play south tried the JC at trick 2 after 9D was covered by the queen from east and snapped up by the AD in south's hand. West covered the JC with the QC taken in dummy by the KC. South drew trumps in 2 rounds and then discarded the 10D on the 3rd round of hearts playing for this ending:
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North West East South
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- - - 9
- - - -
J 3 K 8 2
A 6 9 8 10 4 -
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When south let the 9S discarding the JD from dummy east had to decipher south's holding. Was it 2 clubs or 2 diamonds. Going in a blind spot discarded his KD to give south his undeserved grand slam east is to be blamed for one thing - if south had held J9X of clubs, would he have begun with the JC in a grand slam? More ever his partner was showing a doubleton in diamonds. Bridge can be a pressure game but every move in it calls for a logic behind it.