Ascoli Satriano
by Bernard Marcoux, Montréal
Alas!
You will never travel to Ascoli Satriano.
It is not your fault,
you say, but I am not sure about that you were born in Canada,
not in Italy, and you think it is a good reason. In addition,
you don't travel. Or, if you travel, for exoticism you say, you
rely only on travel agents, on sure things: you take packages
with guides to Rome, Florence, Venice. In winter, you go to
Cuba or Florida, always all included, because it is less
trouble. You don't like trouble. In fact, when you travel, you
do it «accidentally», like if you were staying at home. You
look for Holiday Inns and eat steak, like at home.
If you
decided to go to Ascoli Satriano, you would have to take a map,
to establish a plan, to leave the main roads and travel into the
unknown. You don't like the unknown, you prefer freeways, or
the reassuring comfort of your house.
All in
all, you are a bit (a lot) coward, you don't have the guts to go
and see elsewhere, you prefer to stay home and repeat that
travelling costs too much. But, deep down, you nevertheless
envy those who travel.
In 4th
position, you have:
AJ103
K6
AK2
KQ63
Oh, you just love it when you have big
hands! You feel secure with those Aces and Kings. LHO passes,
partner passes and RHO shatters your bliss with a 3
opening bid.
Do you really want to travel, like you say
you would if you could? I am giving you here the opportunity.
Or are you fearful? If you feel fear, you will pass and hope
that partner will double, in order to «get» them. You like it
so much when you «get» them, those players who bid, too much to
your liking, those players who jump into life with gusto (in
fact, you are a bit jealous; you feel it is not permitted to
love life like this, and to enjoy it so much). When you get
them, you are so happy. When you don't get them, well, it is
not your fault, you're not lucky, you didn't have a bid, partner
did not double, etc. It is «so you»: you want everything, but
you want to stay home, in front of your TV set.
You are daydreaming, of course, partner will
never double (he is more afraid than you are), you will get a
bad score and you will complain about your bad luck, or about
those opponents who never let you play bridge.
Or you can dare, you can pull all the stops
and bid 3NT, and you will feel like when the plane starts on the
runway: this irresistible thrust, that inebriates you each time,
this void deep down your stomach that confirms that you are
leaving, that you are airborne, that you are flying, that you
are «living» at last.
Your belt fastened, you decide to listen to
me, to get in there, to jump in there, and che sera sera: you
take a deep breath and pull out the 3NT card. Nobody doubles
and you already feel better.
LHO leads a small spade.
Dummy
5
J9843
J643
J95
You
AJ103
K5
AK2
KQ63
The sight of dummy makes you already regret
your audacity: where are you going to find tricks? You were so
secure, you should have passed, shouldn't you? All those small
cards in dummy give you the creeps. What you like at bridge are
those Aces and Kings, those sure things that nobody can take
away from you, like Rome, Florence, Venice. Lower than the
Queen, you don't like bridge so much any more.
You don't know
what to do with those 6’s, and those 7’s, or 8’s, or 9’s. They
are like those unknown destinations on road maps, where nobody
goes, like Ascoli Satriano, and all those mysterious names:
Bitonto, Corato, Canosa, Cerignola … Maybe we'll get lost …
You are breathing heavily: you really don’t
know what to do with this dummy. You feel anguish down your
stomach and panic is creeping into you. Don’t panic, count!!
To count at bridge is the best antidote to panic: count, count,
count. Count what? Your tricks, obviously. You have 1 trick
in spades, 2 in diamonds, and … well, don’t panic. The Diamond
Queen could be doubleton?
That’s it, start to dream again.
Count, I told you, don’t dream, don’t feel sorry for yourself,
don’t take it out on me, you dove in, you’re in it now, that’s
life, real life. You are the master of your destiny.
Let’s count something else then: RHO has
probably 7 spades, that’s at least a useful information. He has
then 6 cards in the 3 other suits. See, we are making progress.
You can probably develop 3 tricks in clubs,
if you guess them properly, obviously. Do you feel better?
No? Let’s go anyway.
RHO plays the spade Queen, you win the Ace
and play a club; LHO plays small and it is up to you: don’t
play the Jack. Do you really believe clubs are breaking 3-3 on
this auction? Let’s be serious.
In addition, at bridge, you
must try to get the opponents to play their big cards on your
small cards. The 9, that card that you never look at, becomes
suddenly interesting, and you play it: RHO plays the Ace!! Do
you feel better now? I hope so. For my part, I am breathing a
little easier. RHO plays back the 10 of diamonds, showing
probably a doubleton.
You take your Ace, play a small club to
the Jack, then KQ of clubs, RHO sluffing spades on the last 2
clubs. His hand should be:
KQ98xxx
xx
10x
Ax
See how much progress we made with nothing.
All you have to do is count. West probably has a 1444 hand. If
he had had a 5-card suit, maybe he would have led it. His hand
should then be:
x
A(Q)xx
Qxxx
10xxx
Count again: you have 1 trick in spades
(eventually 2, but you have to count only sure tricks), 3 in
clubs, 2 in diamonds, 6 tricks in all. Better than what we had
at the start, no? You need 3 more tricks, and the location of
the Ace of hearts means you won’t make a trick with your King.
Don’t give up, don’t feel discouraged, think and count, it is
the only way: count, count, count. This is the position:
Dummy
--
J984
J64
--
LHO
RHO
-- K98x
A(Q)xx
(Q)x
Qxx
x
--
--
You
J103
K5
K2
--
You are sitting
on the edge of your seat, fully awake now, concentrated at 100%,
that’s real life (thank me now for having forced you to overcome
your fear). Do you see the solution? LHO has only Hearts and
Diamonds …
You begin to see the light at the end of the tunnel:
if you play the King of hearts, LHO will take it and won’t be
able to play diamonds, for he will give you 3 tricks. He will
have to play back a heart and, if RHO doesn’t have the Queen,
you will be in dummy. Can RHO have the heart Queen? Maybe.
Maybe she is singleton.
If she is doubleton, what will happen? LHO will win you King, play back a heart to RHO’s Queen, who
will cash his spade and get out with a diamond, leaving you a
trick short: 3 spades, 2 diamonds and 3 clubs. This solution
has therefore to be rejected. At this point in your contract,
you have to root for the position that will permit you to
succeed. LHO must have AQ of hearts if you want to make 9
tricks.
You don’t really see clearly the rest (like
when you take the road for Ascoli Satriano), but you decide to
sacrifice this heart King. West takes it with the Ace, East
following, and comes back a heart.
You are at the crossroads: which card do you
play from dummy? Verifying once again in your mind your
hypothesis of necessity, you finally play the Jack in dummy and
East produces the … 10. You heart skips a beat.
The position
is now:
Dummy
--
98
J64
--
West
East
-- K98x
Qx
--
Qxx
x
--
--
You
J103
--
K2
--
You are almost
home. You’re in dummy; count your tricks once again: you have 1
spade (eventually 2), 1 heart, 2 diamonds and 3 clubs. You can
make another heart trick with the
9 8 combination in dummy.
Incredible, isn’t it?
You see the rest
now very clearly. If you play the 9 of hearts, you will pitch a
small spade, West will be in hand again with the 3rd
trick for the defence.
If he comes back diamond, you will play
the Jack, making 3 tricks in the suit. You will then cash the 8
of hearts. You will come back to your hand with the King of
diamonds, stripping East of his last diamond and you will exit
with the Jack of spades.
East will take his King, 4th
trick for the defence, but will have to give you a spade for
your 9th trick.
If West comes
back a heart, you will make the 8 in dummy, pitching your
diamond, come in hand with the King of diamonds and the rest is
easy. Fascinating, isn’t it?
Those 8, 9, 10
and Jacks, how they appear suddenly under a new light. In fact,
you have made almost half of your tricks with these cards you
don’t really look at generally: J9 in hearts, J9 of clubs, and
you will make the Jack of diamonds or the 10 of spades.
While you are floating, your opponents get
impatient (like those people in a hurry who want to arrive in
big cities very quickly and don’t care for small villages). You
let them huff and puff, and enjoy.
Ascoli Satriano appears on horizon, amidst
the green plains and the golden pasture of Italy’s heartland.
High on its pinnacle, it looks like those J98xx of hearts in
dummy, apparently without interest, in the middle of nowhere,
out of reach.
But there was a way, all you had to do was to
search for it, and you found it.
You play the 9 of hearts, pitching a small
spade. West wins and comes back a heart. You win the 8 in
dummy, pitching your small diamond. You play diamond to your
King, and place the spade Jack on the table. East wins and
comes back a spade, you win the 10 : 9 tricks and this sensation
of floating, of soaring, of living, that you never felt.
At bridge, every card counts and, to succeed
in a contract, you cannot afford to be snob, in a hurry or
negligent: every card is important, and sometimes you have to
sacrifice Rome, Florence and Venice if you want to discover the
real pleasure of travelling, the real intoxication, the real
world, these 8’s, 9’s and 10’s that nobody talks about in travel
guides.
If you go one day to Ascoli Satriano, you’ll
see, nothing has changed. You enter the village on the right,
by the only street. The house of Arturo’s grand-parents is just
there, the third on the right, with this veranda on top on the
second story that he remembers so well, even if he went there
only once, 70 years ago. A little further, you arrive on the
plaza. You stop at the bar and Arturo asks if the village still
has some people called Rolla, his surname. The barman says:
“Certainly, the mayor is a Rolla.”
I told you : nothing has changed.
Sadly, it is not really the truth, one thing
has changed. If you go to Ascoli Satriano, it will never be at
the same time as my friend Arturo, and you will never hear him
tell you how, when he was a little boy, the farmers would walk
the streets of his village, in the morning, and stop at each
door in order to milk the goats for the housewives.
Have a nice trip, dear friend*.
*In memory of my
beloved friend de Arturo Rolla, from Trieste (Italy), lover of
life, who died the 28 of September 1997.
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