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English 59 Horror Corner (4) – Stumbling at The Last Hurdle Ram Soffer The year is 1978. The young and successful Scottish partnership of Michael Rosenberg and Barnet Shenkin was about to end when Rosenberg moved to the USA, but they did play one last event – the prestigious Cavendish invitational pairs in New York. In this event each pair was “bought” and the big first prize (more than 100K$) would go to whoever owned the winning pair. The Scots seized the lead early and did not concede it throughout the event despite having their own share of bad results. A good result for them in the very last board would have clinched the title. Those were the four hands: ♠ ♥ ♦ ♣ AJ932 743 93 A32 ♠ ♥ ♦ ♣ 75 982 KT8652 Q9 ♠ ♥ ♦ ♣ K84 6 QJ74 K8765 ♠ ♥ ♦ ♣ QT6 AKQJT5 A JT5 Contract: 6 ♥ Lead: ♦ 5 Result: Making 6 West North East South Rosenberg Shenkin 1 ♥ Pass 1♠ Pass 4 ♥ Pass 5♣ Pass 6 ♥ Pass Pass Pass Did you notice something strange in the bidding? Actually, North took a long time to cue-bid five clubs – he might have been seriously considering passing. East was holding the club king behind the ace (which North must have had for his five-level cue-bid) plus a stopper in North’s main suit, spades. Clearly a club lead would be advantageous for the defense, at the very least removing North’s side entry. Yet Barnet Shenkin, sitting East, failed to double five clubs for the lead. He described it with the following words: “…my brain was going 100 miles an hour. What was I going to do if he cuebid 5♣. We had worked on our lead-directional doubles… but what if they bid it and Michael had the ♦ K, and a club lead would let them make it? I saw him pull out the 5♣ bid and I was there smoothly with my Pass .” In my humble opinion, Barnet was guilty of overthinking. Why not do the simple, logical thing and double instead of speculating about the diamond king? In the case of partner having nothing in both suits he would have surely led a diamond after East’s failure to double five clubs. Barnet was happy after the actual ♦ 5 lead,