The Occult by Larry Klimko Do you believe in the occult? Neither do I. Well, almost not. But sometimes some event comes along which is so bizarre and so much against the odds that it makes me wonder. Take for instance the following. On Tuesday, Feb. 13, 2007, we held a GNT club level qualifying game at the Bridge Center. During that game Rick's team pointed out to me a hand which came up at their table, the result of a random shuffle. A smother play they called it. Here's the hand as Rick wrote it down for me. North ----- Q J 10 9 8 A Q 2 10 2 A K 9 West East ----- ----- 2 K 7 5 3 10 7 5 3 8 6 4 Q 7 6 5 3 A K 9 Q J 10 8 7 2 South ----- A 6 4 K J 9 J 8 4 6 5 4 3 North played in 4S. The defense started with three rounds of diamonds, ace, king and low to the queen. Declarer ruffed the third round and took the spade finesse, playing the queen. East ducked. Then the spade jack, ducked again by East. The finesses worked, but after two finesses dummy was down to the singleton ace while East held K 7 of spades. It sure looks like declarer must lose a spade yet, as well as the club. But watch. Declarer next played off her hearts, then the club ace, king and out a club. West was in with the following position. 10 9 ---- ---- ---- ---- K 7 10 ---- Q ---- ---- ---- A ---- ---- 6 It mattered not what West returned. Declarer would ruff with the ten and East was caught in a bind. If he overruffed with the king, dummy would overruff with the ace and declarer would win the last trick. And if East underruffed with his seven, dummy would pitch the club, allowing declarer to win the trick. Dummy would win the last trick with the spade ace picking off the king. Neat, isn't it. Well, nothing bizarre about that play, elegant to be sure, but not bizarre. You might expect it to come up about once every five years or so if you play regularly. Maybe even less often. But, a week and a day later on Wednesday, February 21, 2007, after the game Brian came to me and said, "Larry, there's a great hand that came up today. You ought to write it up. It was a smother play, Board Eleven." "Smother play?" I thought. "I've seen that somewhere recently. Yes, last Tuesday evening during the GNT's." As Brian described the hand to me, it sounded exactly like the hand from the Tuesday GNT game. I suggested that the board hadn't been shuffled for a week and a day. That suggestion was not really believable, but here was the hand, a week and a day later. Well, I looked at Board Eleven and wrote it down. Here it is, not quite the same as the board from Tuesday. North ----- K J 8 A 5 2 J 10 5 8 6 4 2 West East ----- ----- 9 6 4 10 7 5 3 K 7 4 3 6 A K 7 Q 8 6 4 2 7 5 3 Q J 10 South ----- A Q 2 Q J 10 9 8 9 3 A K 9 But it has the exact same distribution as in the hand from Tuesday except that hearts and spades are interchanged, and the hand is rotated 180 degrees. And the face cards are identically placed! Some of the spots are even the same. Look at the spots in the non-trump major suit of the defender's hands opposite the trump king. And look at the trump spots in the defender's hands with the king. And, irony of ironies, Mollie played the hand on Tuesday evening, Brian played the hand from Wednesday afternoon; yes, both made four. I checked with Rick and he assures me that the board from Tuesday was Board 20, not Board 11. Also, he assures me that on Tuesday spades were trumps, not hearts and the declarer was North, not South. So this is not a case of a non-shuffled board. The board on Wednesday presumably WAS randomly shuffled. Bizarre? I think so. And against all odds? One would have to say yes. Makes me wonder. Is there some occult force out there trying to tell us (me?) something? I taught a course on advanced declarer play techniques this past Winter term and while preparing material for the course, I came across this play in Watson. Watson does not include the hand in his chapter on coups, but rather in the chapter on endplays. He also does not give it a name but puts it in a section appropriately named 'A Brilliant End-Play "Coup"'. I decided not to include that play in the course because I felt it was too rare. My students would never see it in actual play, I thought. Is that occult force trying to tell me to include it? I'm thinking I may have to revise the course plan the next time I teach it. Incidentally, we were told that this play is a Devil's coup, not a smother play. But I looked in the Bridge Encyclopedia (2001, Sixth Edition) and their example of a smother play is very close to the above hands, while their examples of Devil's coups are rather different, so it seems to me that smother play is the correct name.