First
opponents in St. Catharines, Ont., on Friday included a player I hadn’t seen
before who declined to enter his number into the Bridgemate gizmo. He said his name
was Amir (Amir Farsoud, the results on the club website tell us) and that he
was Iranian. Not Persian?, I inquired. No, he said, that’s a name given by the
British and smacks of colonialism.
At
any rate, Amir and his partner, Norm St. Denis, were adventurous convention
hounds and he made it clear that he knew a lot about bridge. His main point was
that point count means nothing and, as an example, he cited the “Moonraker”
hand (actually the Duke of Cumberland hand), an outrageously distributional deal
which author Ian Fleming incorporated into the James Bond novel of that name. The
winning hand at 7 Clubs redoubled has only eight high card points. Google it
and see. (Bond opened 7 Clubs, but now that I look at the hand, an astute opponent, holding 31 high card points, could make 7 Hearts or 7 Spades if his partner is sharp enough to bid one of the major suits over his double.)
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