Success Was Not In The Cards

3 [Heart]
4 [Diamond]
4 N.T.
5 N.T.
7 [Club]

EAST
(Miles)

PASS
PASS
PASS
PASS
PASS

You will notice that Gerber, inventor of the four-club ace-asking system, also uses the Blackwood convention, just as Easley Blackwood occasionally employs a Gerber bid. Neither North player could positively locate the queen of hearts in partner's hand. Harmon, with no assurance his partner had a long club suit, had to settle for a small slam in no trump. Gerber, knowing his partner had a good five-card club suit because of the club rebid, bravely and rightly went the route. The odds were certainly in favor of making all the tricks. But the fates had a different ending in mind. West held five trumps to the 10. It was impossible to avoid a trump loser, and we were doomed. In fact, when Root won the ace of spades and properly played two rounds of trumps, it left him with two spade losers and no way to get rid of them before West could gain the lead. We were down three and, instead of gaining 10 I MPs on this deal, we lost 16.

We beat the Kantar team anyway. But the round robin ended in a three-way tie, each team winning one match when Nail's team beat us and Kantar defeated them. That necessitated deciding the title by the percentage of points scored by each team compared to the points scored against it. On this basis the Kantar team won, Nail was second, we finished third.

Our third-place finish is not without its benefits, however. Members of the first two teams in the Spingold automatically qualify for the International Trials in Phoenix, where the team to play in the 1963 world championship will be selected. Since Schenken, Leventritt, Helen Sobel and I had already qualified, and Gerber had been appointed the team's nonplaying captain, we did not need the qualifying spots. Now the members of both Kantar's and Nail's teams will be in Phoenix, helping to insure that the U.S. has the strongest possible squad when it takes on Italy and other foreign champions for the world title next June.