THE
BRIDGE WORLD
CUSTOMS
BY MARCELO BRANCO, RIO DE JANEIRO
After a hard trip and a long
line, at last the customs inspector called me. He had a
nasty-looking face. I promptly showed him my documents:
passport, boarding pass, tourist visa, and customs forms.
After looking at my passport photo for many seconds, he
asked:
“Are
you bringing any food or have you been recently on a
farm?”
“No.”
“Are you bringing more than ten thousand dollars?”
“I
never saw so much money in my whole life. I have two or
three thousand dollars.”
My
attempt at flippancy failed. He gazed at me stonily and
said:
“How much
really do you have, two thousand or three?”
“I
don’t know exactly, but my best guess is three thousand.”
He made a discreet signal to a supervisor sitting behind
another counter and commanded dryly:
“Take the
red line!”
A bad start! There were three lines: red, yellow and
green.
In the red
one, checking was tightest. A kindlier supervisor began
this interview:
“What is
the purpose of your visit to U.S.?”
“I’m going to play in a bridge championship, the Fall
Nationals at San Francisco.”
“Oh, so you are a bridge pro?”
“Not a professional, but I travel a lot around the world
playing bridge. You can see on my passport that . . . ”
“So, Mr. Branco, you are a top-level player?”
“Well, people say that.”
He struck something on his computer keyboard and asked:
“What
is Stayman?”
“A convention to ask about major suits when partner
opens one notrump.”
“Right! What do you bid with this hand?”
He swiveled
the computer’s monitor so that I could see:
A K Q J 10 8 3
A 5
A Q J 6
8.
“I would open two clubs.”
He looked at me suspiciously and announced:
“The
computer says that you should open two spades, showing a
very strong hand and a good spade suit. Why did you open
two clubs with a singleton?”
“Well, bidding two spades would have been done many,
many, years ago. Nowadays, that opening shows a weak
hand. Modern methods use a two-club opening bid as the
unique way to show a very strong hand. Probably the
computer’s system is very old-fashioned.”
That was another mistake. Indignantly, he snapped: “Are
you saying that my computer is old-fashioned? It’s a
Pentium 4 processor with a 4 gigahertz clock, dual-core
with hyperthreading technology, 2 GB RAM, Windows Vista
Business, and HD.”
“Take it easy, I was talking about the installed bridge
software, which needs an update.”
He calmed down and scanned the screen. “Maybe you are
right. There is an option for Modern Bridge.” He clicked
the mouse, the computer made some noise, and in a few
seconds it displayed a blood-red background with MODERN
BRIDGE in black, gothic letters.
“Okay,”
he resumed, “What do you bid with this hand?” The
computer showed:
9
Q 8 4 2
J 9 7 6 3 2 6
9 2.
“Vulnerable or not?”
“The computer doesn’t say. Are you fooling around?”
“Forget it, I pass.”
“Wrong again! The computer recommends a three-diamond
opening bid. It says that recently a very good player
from your country used this opening bid with great
success. It seems that his name is Villas-Boas—a hard
name to say; too many vowels.”
Immediately, I recognized the deal. I had overcalled
that three-diamond opening with four clubs on:
A K x x
x x
x 6
K Q J x x
x.
Partner’s four-heart bid ended the auction. The contract
went down one with three notrump cold. We lost 11 imps
on the board; now, I had been bitten twice by this crazy
opening bid. I said:
“Sometimes I’m aggressive, but not that much.”
“What? You are aggressive? Are you threatening me?”
“Aggressive
in bridge style.”
He had almost lost his temper. “Mr.Branco, I offer you
one last chance. How do you open this hand?” I saw:
Q 2
K J 3
K Q 4 3 2 6
Q J 2.
A piece of cake, I thought. I can’t go wrong. “One
diamond,” I said, loud and clear.
“Wrong yet again! The software says that the same player
opened one notrump. As far as I can see, your knowledge
about this game is very narrow.”
Good gosh! Another fond memory. Against one notrump —
three notrump, I had had to lead from:
10 x x
x x x
x x x
A K 9 x.
Trying to avoid giving away a trick, I led a heart.
Dummy had ace-queen fourth, ace-third in the red suits,
so declarer took nine tricks when we could have taken at
least the first seven in the black suits. A little
frightened, I asked:
“Well, what will happen to me?”
“There is nothing I can do for you. You’ll be directed
to the Bridge Sector. Since 9/11 we need to be very
careful, you know. Eric and Jeff, the best bridge
partnership among customs officials in the entire
country, are in charge of this new branch. They are the
right people to evaluate your bridge expertise.
“Eric Rodwell and Jeff Meckstroth?”
“No, I’m talking about Eric Meckinthroat and Jeff
Stickwell, known informally as Stickinthroat. They make
a very tough pair to play against.”
I was escorted to a quiet room. Soon, a tall guy dressed
in jeans and a white T-shirt, came in. “Hi, I’m Jeff,”
he said.
“Eric will interview you separately. It’s my job to
squeeze you, Mr. Branco.”
After some routine questions about Michaels, Roman
Blackwood, Landy, DONT, Cappelletti, and a few obscure
conventions, he got around to something that seemed to
pique his interest.
South dealer East-West vulnerable
NORTH
Q J
Q 4
Q 4 2
K J 10 5 3 2
SOUTH
A K 10 9 3
K 10 2
A K 7 5 3
—
SOUTH WEST NORTH EAST
Jeff
Eric
1
Pass 1NT 2
3
Pass 4
(All Pass)
“Eric should have bid three hearts over three diamonds,”
he explained, “and I would have bid three notrump, but
sometimes he does these things.”
“But four spades looks very likely to make,” I offered.
“Wait! West led the heart jack to East’s ace and ruffed
the return. He shifted to the diamond jack, and East
ruffed!”
“Unbelievable!” I said.
“On the third heart, West ruffed and dummy overruffed.
Assuming that East has the ace of clubs for his
vulnerable overcall, there are two ways of making the
contract. If East also held the club queen, there was a
double ruffingfinesse: club king, ace, ruff; spade to
dummy; club jack, queen, ruff; draw trumps; back to
dummy with the queen of diamonds to cash a club. But if
West held the queen of clubs, I could play club king,
ace, ruff; then high trumps to reach:
NORTH
—
—
Q 4
J 10 5
WEST
EAST
—
—
Immaterial
10 9 8 6
Q 6
SOUTH
9
—
A K 7 5
—
“The
last trump would complete the transfer squeeze. Of
course, I played for the squeeze, but it didn’t work
because East had the queen of clubs. Now Eric is picking
on me, saying it was obvious that East had the queen for
his overcall, and that I’m always showing off, trying to
do something fancy on every deal.
He can be a very bad guy. Don’t you think it was merely
a guess?”
Skating on thin ice, I said: “Well, you told me that you
like to squeeze people, but why not play the club ten or
jack of clubs first. It would be very hard for East to
play low with ace-queen.”
With a jolt, he realized the value of this tactic.
Staring at me and shaking, he begged: “Please don’t say
a word to Eric! I’ll get your entry visa cleared.”
A few minutes after Jeff left, a man with a thin
moustache, a serious face, and a wary look entered. “Hi,”
he said; “I’m Eric. This is the second part of the
examination.”
He started with questions about some elementary card
combinations. As the ice was broken, he relaxed; like
any bridge player, he, too, was soon complaining about
his partner. Jeff’s ears were probably burning.
“Jeff pushes too much,” he said.
“The very worst is when I go down in some crazy contract
he bid or induced me to bid; then he says that I didn’t
play well, that I’m a weak card-player. Sometimes, he is
very rude. Look at this deal we played yesterday:
East dealer Neither side vulnerable
NORTH
4 3 2
4 2
J 8 4 2
A K 5 3
SOUTH
K Q 10 9 8 7
K J 5 3
A
6 4
SOUTH WEST NORTH EAST
Eric
Jeff
— — —
1
1
Double 2
Pass
4
Pass Pass
Pass
“West’s double showed hearts, so two hearts was a strong
spade raise. Imagine my astonishment when I saw the
dummy: weak in high cards and weak in trumps. West
led the ace and another spade; East dropped the jack,
then pitched a club. I needed two tricks from hearts,
from either high cards or a ruff. The bidding marked
East with the ace of hearts. My choices were to play
East for the ace-queen of hearts by leading through him
twice, or to play East for ace-doubleton or tripleton of
hearts and keep West off lead until I had ruffed a heart
in dummy. “I crossed to dummy’s club ace and played a
heart to East’s ten and my king. I crossed to dummy
again in clubs and led another heart. East played the
six, I played the jack, and West took the queen to play
a third round of trumps: down one.
“What was the exact heart distribution?” I asked.
“East had ace-ten-six.”
“The defense was brilliant; it was the only chance to
defeat the contract. Who are these guys?”
“Our regular teammates, Paul Samman and Bob Holiday. Sam
means surface-to-air missile, and man needs no
explanation; if you relax against him, you are
immediately shot down. Holiday plays so effortlessly
that he seems always to be on vacation. But against this
defense I cannot make the contract, right?
Thoughtfully, I said: “If you had followed low when East
played the ten, . . .” I began. Very quickly, he grasped
the implications of that approach.
“Stop! Please, say nothing to Jeff!
Let me process your green card immediately.”
Very soon, I had my documents back, all stamped in the
appropriate places. I ran across the tarmac, barely
catching my connecting flight to San Francisco, off to
meet the real Eric and Jeff, and many other bridge
friends, knowing that the story there could be quite
different.