The Adventures of Poor Frank, Part CLXXXII: Wrong is Right

 

The Adventures of Poor Frank, Part CLXXXII: Wrong is Right

By Ray Adams

frankandarchie@yahoo.com

Can wrong be right? When Lucky Archie is in the equation, anything is possible.

 

Red Dyeman and Lucky Archie produced a nice bidding sequence to arrive at six diamonds – only they didn’t! At the last moment, when Lucky Archie thought he had put the six diamond bid on the table, he had actually put the six heart card down. Red assumed Archie knew what he was doing – after all Red had four good hearts of his own – and he passed. So six hearts became the final contract and Poor Frank led the king of spades.

Lucky Archie immediately called the director and explained that his left hand opponent had led out of turn. It took the other three players a good five minutes to convince Lucky Archie that he was playing six hearts and Red was the dummy. When this sank in, Lucky Archie immediately fainted. Luckily, the director had smelling salts for just such an occasion, and the Lucky One was soon revived.

The king of spades went to Archie’s ace and he immediately ruffed a small spade in dummy. Next came a heart to the ace and a heart back to the jack, finessing the queen. This held and the king of hearts was cashed, leaving Poor Frank’s queen as the only trump remaining. Lucky Archie now ran the diamonds, but Poor Frank ruffed in on the third round. Poor Frank had only clubs left and he exited with a sneaky nine of clubs. Lucky Archie had no choice but to let this run around to his queen. He now led a club to the good dummy and claimed. Of course, this was a top result for him and let him slide past Poor Frank into first place that evening.

Later, when Poor Frank was discussing the evening’s hands with Janet, he said, “How can wrong be right? And how come when it is right, I’m always the victim?”

“What’s interesting about this hand, darling, is that it’s cold for seven diamonds. All you have to do is take the heart finesse, ruff a heart and lead the queen of clubs to smother the singleton jack in the East hand. Now if someone had bid and made seven diamonds, would they have been wrong?”

“No, dearest, they would have been lucky overbidders. But what Archie did was just plain wrong. It goes against all the teachings of the great bridge gurus.”

“Well, darling, would it be wrong for you to come right over here?”

And that put Poor Frank back in a good mood.