(3 of 9)
But this seeming powerhouse is the famed Mississippi Heart Hand that, according to legend, riverboat gamblers used to deal out to suckers in the days of bridge's ancestor, whist. Far from taking all 13 tricks with hearts as trump, the hand can take only six, because the opponent on the left holds:
8 7 6 5 4 3 2 A K Q J 10 9
The System as Servant. Because the actual trick-taking value of a hand depends on how the other cards lie, the bridge player must strive to 1) infer the contents of the unseen hands, and 2) convey the picture of his own hand to his partner. In these tasks, a bidding system is an indispensable tool—but so are attention, memory, psychological perceptivity and clear thinking, plus that obscure talent called "card sense." In addition, a really good bridge player has a talent that Charles Goren defines as "the ability to make sound decisions under pressure." Rules, he warns, are made not as the player's master, but as servant. And despite sneers that he is a slave to his own system, few players can break the rules faster and more effectively than Charles Goren. Thus Goren once found himself in this tournament plight:
NORTH (Sobel) 6 4 10 7 6 5 10 6 Q 8 7 4 3
WEST EAST Q 5 A J 10 8 7 3 2 Q 3 J 2 Q J 8 7 5 4 A 2 A J 9 K 5
SOUTH (Goren)
K 9 A K 9 8 4 K 9 3 10 6 2
Leading against the opponents' contract of four spades (i.e., ten tricks with spades trumps), Goren took two quick tricks with the ace and king of hearts. But where could he go from there? From studying his own hand and dummy's, plus the bidding, he was sure that East held the two unseen aces, and probably the club king. A diamond lead would sacrifice Goren's king. A club lead, enabling East to play through North's queen, would establish a third club trick on which East could discard his losing diamond. And a heart lead would let East trump in dummy, discarding the diamond. That left Goren with the prospect of breaking two rules that can be glibly quoted by every tyro: 1) never lead from a king, and 2) never leave an honor unguarded. Goren unblinkingly led the nine of spades. By violating two elementary rules of play, he made the only lead that, as the cards lay, could possibly have defeated the contract. After taking the trick with dummy's queen, East led the five of spades, putting down his jack on the assumption that South, being apparently of sound mind, would never have led the nine away from K-9 of trump. Goren copped the trick with his lurking king, later brought home his king of diamonds to defeat the contract.
Russian Whist. It took a long international evolution to produce modern bridge, with its beautiful balances between competition and cooperation, system and psychology. The ancestral game of whist, which still survives in English and New England villages, was bridge without bidding: the trump suit was decided on by turning up the last card dealt. Edgar Allan Poe wrote of whist: "Men of the highest order of intellect have been known to take an apparently unaccountable delight in it, while eschewing chess as frivolous." But with no bidding and no exposed hand to guide the players, the game was crude and guessy compared to modern bridge.