The Adventures of Poor Frank, Part CXXXI: Greed Strikes Out Again

The Adventures of Poor Frank, Part CXXXI: Greed Strikes Out Again

By Ray Adams

frankandarchie@yahoo.com

 

The last blog showed how the greed associated with doubles led to a good result for Team Porcupine. Greed also played a big role in a recent encounter between Poor Frank and  Lucky Archie.

After Poor Frank opened one diamond on this board, the bidding quickly got out of hand, especially when Lucky Archie jumped to four hearts. Poor Frank probably shouldn’t have bid five diamonds, but he was in the mood to push Lucky Archie around if possible. It all came home for Frank when Lucky Archie could not restrain himself from bidding six hearts. Poor Frank now knew he had his rival just where he wanted him and he tossed the double card on the table. When this got back to Lucky Archie, he tried seven clubs, also doubled by Frank.

The effect of the seven club bid, however, was to put North on lead, not Poor Frank. All would have been well had North led a spade, but instead North made the thoughtful lead of the king of diamonds, assuming that this would hold the lead and Poor Frank would signal North to switch to whichever suit he wanted. This was fine in theory, but when dummy ruffed the opening lead. West quickly drew trumps and ran the hearts for all thirteen tricks. This amazing result propelled Lucky Archie into the winner’s circle that fine evening.

As Poor Frank was preparing to leave the studio, he overheard Lucky Archie talking to a group of bridge buffs who were hanging on his every word.

“Well,” the Lucky One said, “I knew Poor Frank would know what to lead, so I decided to put his partner on lead and make him figure it out. That worked out super when North led a diamond instead of a spade.”

“Simply brilliant, Archie,” Poor Frank heard someone say.

Poor Frank knew that the chances of Lucky Archie having reasoned out the hand as he said he did were about as small as holding a 29 point hand two times in a row. His rival had simply gotten scared and ran like a jackrabbit in coyote country.   Frank was suddenly overcome by an irresistible wave of nausea and had to jackrabbit his own way to the restroom.