Experts Are Visionaries

None Vul
IMPs
Dealer: North
Lead: A

	taryk — K 6 2 K 10 8 3 A K J 9 8 4
kalligr A 9 8 7 5 Q 10 5 4 7 4 6 3		bania J 10 6 4 3 A Q J 9 5 Q 5 2
	Maestro K Q 2 J 9 8 7 3 A 6 2 10 7

West 2 Dbl

North 1 4 Pass

East 1 Pass Pass

South 2 Pass Pass

Today’s auction contains some controversial bids, which is usual, but none by Gee, which is not. North’s 1C opener is unexceptionable, nor do I find anything to quarrel with in East’s spade overcall. Gee, sitting South, makes a fine 2H call with a hand a little too good for 1NT. If we assume that E/W are playing preemptive raises in competition and that West can show a limit raise by cuebidding hearts, then 3S might be better than 2. It turns out to be irrelevant, as North raises to game on good support and a void in the opponents’ suit. This is passed to West, who, holding two defensive tricks, makes a rather frisky double, following it with the worst possible lead for the defense, the SA.

Gee ruffs in dummy and surveys the hand. West obviously has a trump holding; the double can’t be based on anything else. If there are only two trump losers the hand always makes. But if there are three then declarer needs to set up a third club trick for a diamond sluff.

Gee crosses to hand with the DA and runs the HJ, hoping West began with AQxx — not too likely, since this would give East something like J10xxxx 10 QJxx Qx for his overcall. In any case, bad news: East wins the HA, which means there are three likely trump losers, and returns a spade.

At this point it is clear that hearts are 4-1 unless West has gone mad. Everything hinges on clubs. With two outside entries to dummy, playing the two top clubs and ruffing the third high in hand will succeed when they break 3-2, and when West has four, and when West has the stiff Q. Altogether that’s almost 85%. Taking the club finesse will succeed when West holds the CQ. Looks like 50%; maybe less, since East was the overcaller.

Now if you regard this preamble as a suggestion that an expert like Gee play the top clubs, then you have been missing the point of these chronicles. Gee finessed the club. Of course he understood that the percentages were against him. But “against all odds, [he] had the sense that it would make.” If you have ever wondered, watching an expert table, what distinguishes their play from yours, it’s that experts are visionaries. I cannot stress this point enough.