Bridge April Fools

1st April 2008 – 5.42 pm

I recently learnt the basics of Bridge at a really quite relaxed club at work, and am enjoying playing and learning the game. On 1st April, some of the players conspired to play a prank on one of the members and got everyone else, all five of us, involved. The idea was, and you'll probably need to understand Bridge a little to understand the prank, to wait for this chap to bid a suit and then his partner would, without any further bidding, put him straight in to six of that suit. Then, once the dummy hand was put down, everyone would agree that that was the correct bidding and they would have bid the same, leaving the poor fellow in a difficult contract and wondering what was happening.

As it happened, I was partnering the chap to be fooled. On the first hand played I put in an opening bid, and my partner then bid a second suit. After what I faked as a little thought I returned with a bid of six diamonds, much to his surprise, but no one else's. Unsurprisingly, there was no more bidding on that hand and I put my cards down following the lead card being played. My partner wondered what on earth I was bidding on, having only two diamonds, but everyone backed me up, of course, saying that it was 'by the book'.

It may not have been the best time to pull the prank, though. After all, I opened with one of a suit, and my partner overcalled with a minor suit, showing both points and length. So with a good hand, some help in outside suits from my hand, and a bit of cunning play, he actually made the small slam contract. That's not to say it back-fired. After all, the fellow was startled by the jump bid from the three- to the six-level, and wondered what was going on when my hand was shown. And then everyone was happily amazed when he made the contract, so the whole opening hand has highly entertaining from everyone's perspective, and gave us something to talk about for a while. With such entertainment and a lack of a victim it turned out to be a good April Fools joke to play.

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