September 2022 - 71

Special Contributor
George's World
BY GEORGE JACOBS
NOBET8888@aol.com
S
ome of you may know that I
base a lot of my writing style
on Eddie Kantar's. He was a
funny dude, and I was saddened at his
passing.
Here is a hand where I took his
advice. A lot of his published hands
looked simple at first glance, but as
he was wont to say (If he wonted to
say it, why didn't he just say so?), " If it
was that easy, would I be showing it
to you? "
Playing with Arti Bhargava of Mill
Valley CA in the Rockwell Mixed
Pairs in Reno, you pick up:
5 kQ J 10 9 2 lK 6 5 4 'A 6 2.
The bidding is 1 on your left, 2'
from partner, 3 on your right, and
you try 4k.
They lead a spade and a spade.
What do you do at trick three?
See, this is so typical of Eddie. You
are not on lead at trick three! Why,
you ask? Because at trick one, you
have to say out loud (not out loud in
the world, but to yourself out loud),
" What can go wrong on such an easy
hand? All I have is a spade and maybe
a heart loser. "
" Aha! " says Eddie in your ear.
" What if the hearts have a normal
4-2 split? Watch what happens. You
ruff the second trick and take the
heart finesse and then cash the ace.
When you come to hand to play a
third heart, the king wins and they
play a third spade. Down you go. Playing
the kA and another heart is the
same result, just quicker. "
Now here is the main difference in
our writing styles: Eddie would have
already shown you the hand so you
could follow along. I waited until now
and made you do unnecessary mind
work, but I digress.
 A Q J 7 6
k K 8 7 4
l J 2
' Q 8
 10 2
k A 6
l A Q 10 9
' K J 7 4 3
 K 9 8 4 3
k 5 3
l 8 7 3
' 10 9 5
 5
k Q J 10 9 2
l K 6 5 4
' A 6 2
You must make a plan on every
hand, even a bad one. Here, we were
playing matchpoints where every
trick matters, yet I decided to play as
if it were IMP scoring. (Which seems
to be a recurring theme recently.)
What can go wrong and how do I
overcome it? At trick two, I pitched a
club on the second spade. Now if they
lead a third one, dummy can ruff it.
I can cross to my hand to drive out
the kK and still have a long trump
left to protect against the 4-2 split. I
thought it a tad rude of Deep Finesse
to suggest that both 6' and 6l
make, but I was pleased to see that
4k (the contract we were actually in)
could only make four. This was going
to be hard to explain if hearts were
3-3. Thanks, Eddie.
I was going through my convention
card drawer and found lots of cards
with a variety of people. Some, like
Eddie, passed away during the past
few years. To honor one of them,
here's a story about him. I played
with Thad Cole a fair amount, and
he never psyched in his life. But then
again, with me, maybe, he didn't need
to. We were on the second hand of a
pairs game, and I felt that we needed
to pick up the pace. I opened 2l on a
four-card suit(!). After a double on my
left, Thad did something just a hair
out of the ordinary. With only three
trumps (but at favorable), he jumped
to 4l. The opponents, looking at
three diamonds each, had no trouble
driving to slam, knowing their
partner was short. Even Thad got a
chuckle out of it.
Please submit some Hideous Hog
(aka Ron Anderson) stories to me.
I really like writing about those
and have not had any new ones for
a while. He was far superior to me
as a bridge player, but I had the edge
over the years by getting under his
skin. It didn't go all my way, of course.
He got me plenty. Claude made an
error which I didn't notice. The Hog
September 2022

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