The Adventures of Poor Frank, Part CLXXXI: Poor Frank’s Great Save

The Adventures of Poor Frank, Part CLXXXI: Poor Frank’s Great Save

By Ray Adams

frankandarchie@yahoo.com

 

Poor Frank needed one good board to beat Lucky Archie just the other night at the local duplicate club. He saw an opportunity on the evening’s last hand.

When Lucky Archie’s four spade bid came around to Poor Frank, he decided he had no defense to speak of against this contract and he chose to sacrifice at five clubs. North now decided he had extra values and took the push to five spades, which Jack Leeder, West and Poor Frank’s partner, doubled.

The opening lead was the two of clubs to the seven, jack, and the Lucky One’s ace. Lucky Archie wasted no time ruffing a club, then playing three rounds of hearts to toss his two losing diamonds. He then ruffed a diamond, ruffed his last club in dummy, and claimed, conceding two tricks to the ace and queen of spades. This was worth 850 to Archie and allowed him to surge past Poor Frank and win that evening’s game.

Later, when Poor Frank was discussing the evening’s events with Janet, he said, “I asked Jack what he would have led against four spades. He said he would have tried a diamond, since he didn’t need much from me to make it a good lead. That means we would have taken two diamond tricks and two spades to set four spades. Can you believe that?”

“Bridge is such an amazing game,” Janet said. “You could have set four spades, but you couldn’t set five spades doubled. However, I think your sacrifice was ill judged, darling. It looks like you would have gone down at least 800. And that’s not a very good sacrifice.”

“You’re right, sweetheart. It’s just that I want to beat that lucky duck so much. I guess I just have to learn that sacrificing against an idiot makes one an imbecile or even worse.”

“Well, I would have never said that, darling,” Janet said. “But learning from your mistakes is always a good idea.”