Bridge with my brother Jim

My older brother Jim Hand is well known to old-time Washington DC players.  When I was a teenager, he went to play duplicate bridge at local bridge clubs and tournaments, and I took up after him.  Back in the 1960s he built a strong record in local tournaments, playing with a variety of different partners, including Steve Parker and Walt Walvick.  But, like some very smart people, he found himself indoors playing bridge on some beautiful days which wanted him to be outside enjoying life.  Eventually he stopped playing bridge and became a lawyer who loved the outdoors.

But, the 2007 Fall Nationals were held in San Francisco, and he lives in nearby Alameda.  And I, along with his significant other, got him to play 3 sessions at the Nationals with me.  The first two sessions we played in a compact teams, and although our results were not spectacular, our pick-up teammates were much worse.  The funniest part of those two sessions was watching him learn how to use a bidding box.  Bidding boxes didn't exist back in the days when he played bridge.  Then, on the last day of the tournament we decided to play in a 1-session side game.  And we ended up filling in the 2-session open pairs playing just the first session, when the director needed us to complete a table.

The following cute hand occurred against a respectable New England pair (Simon Kantar and Murray Melton):

The bidding went as diagrammed, and I chose the §A as my opening lead, which was followed by the King, 2, and 4.  What do you play at trick 2?

Well, this is a normal suit preference situation.  Jim is signaling for a diamond shift.  It is a little unusual that he wants me to lead declarer's first bid suit.  And it does not look very appealing to shift away from my queen.  What should I do?

Fortunately I had seen this unusual card combination written up before.  It just does not occur very often, and I think it is even rarer for the defender to know what to do.  Before you read the solution, give the problem a little thought.  I was fortunate, as I knew quickly what to do.  This was the entire hand:

Do you see the solution to the problem now?

I led the ¨10, and declarer naturally expected me to have a singleton diamond.  He covered with the ¨J, and Jim won the ace.  Jim returned his ¨4 and declarer finessed, letting me win a trick with the queen.

We held declarer to 10 tricks, and got 8 1/2 matchpoints on an 11 top.  Left to his own devices, declarer would naturally play a diamond to his king and lose only 1 diamond trick.  This hand amongst others gave us a 65% game.  If we had stayed for a second session, we would have been favorites to win the open pairs. 

It was a pleasure to play bridge with my brother, and see how good his ability still is at the game.