This hand comes from the Spingold master knockout teams. This is a national championship event that was contested at the summer North American Bridge Championships (NABC) held in Miami, FL, earlier this month.
The team comprised of Jim Zimmerman, Shaker Heights; Paul Swanson, Morgantown, WV; Phil Becker, Cleveland; and Kumar Bhatia, Pepper Pike, met the Wolfson team; Jeffrey Wolfson, Northbrook, IL; Neil Silverman, Ft Lauderdale, FL; Peter Weichsel, Encinitas, CA; Robert Levin, Orlando, FL; David Berkowitz, Old Tappan, NJ; and Larry Cohen, Little Falls, NJ.
Berkowitz sat West with Cohen in the East seat. Cohen is best known as the author of the best selling bridge book, The Law of Total Tricks. Berkowitz and Cohen, as a partnership, won the six session life master pairs earlier in the week. Becker, who took the time to pass this deal on to me, sat North. Bhatia held the South cards.
Cohen opened with a precision system two club bid. This shows a regular opening bid with a real club suit. Becker, in the pass out seat, made a takeout double. Cohen's redouble was conventional. He was indicating that he held a six card club suit, no four card major, and a maximum point count for his bid. Bhatia passed. Becker alerted this as a "penalty pass". Most partnerships play a pass in this position as "I am not sure what to do". In other words, with no clear cut action, the decision as to whether to defend or declare is passed back to the other side of the table. Becker and Bhatia have agreed that in this situation, when the partner passing the redouble could have a trump stack, based on prior bidding and the doublers holding in the potential trump suit, the pass is a clear statement that they should defend.
The opening lead was a spade, ducked by North. When South won the ace of hearts he continued with another spade. North won and played a third spade, trumped low by South. When the smoke cleared, the defense had taken seven tricks, a spade, a heart, a diamond, and four clubs. Down two redoubled was worth 1,000 points for North-South. At the companion table, North-South stopped in three hearts, making three, for a score of 140. The 860 point difference was worth 14 IMPs (International Match Points) for the Zimmerman team. Unfortunately it was not enough and the Wolfson team prevailed after 64 boards by a score of 143 IMPs to 111 IMPs.
The Spingold started with ninety teams comprised of arguably the best four or five hundred players in the country. The Zimmerman team made it to the round of thirty-two, and then lost to an excellent team. To put this in the proper perspective, each member of the team that won this event (Nick Nickell, Raleigh, NC; Richard Freeman, Atlanta, GA; Bobby Wolff and Bob Hammon, Dallas, TX; Jeff Meckstroth, Tampa, FL; and Eric Rodwell, Naperville, IL) won 200 gold masterpoints. Had the Zimmerman team won the match that they lost and then gotten knocked out of the event, they would have each won 40 gold masterpoints.