What’s the worst hand you ever held at the bridge table?
It probably wasn’t worse than the North holding in this deal from Denver’s recent summer bridge tournament:
None vulnerable, North dealer
NORTH
5 4 3
6 5 3
6 5 3
7 6 3 2
WEST EAST Q 8 7 6 2 A K 10 9
K 9 4 10 8
10 8 K J 4
8 5 4 A K 10 9
SOUTH
J
A Q J 7 2
A Q 9 7 2
Q J
The North hand, such a thing of beauty. It has a certain sickening symmetry. If you even had a doubleton and partner had a big hand and you had three- or four-card support for his best suit, you might take a ruffing trick.
The official definition of a yarborough is a hand with no card higher than a 9. The odds are about 1,827 to 1. Technically at bridge, the 10 is an honor card. Regular readers will recall the hand from several Sundays ago, where having good spot cards could make or break a contract.
Still, many bridge players generally use the term yarborough broadly to describe a hand with no card higher than 10 — no face cards, no aces.
This North hand is a super yarborough. The odds of holding a hand with the highest card being the 7 are somewhere in the neighborhood of a quarter-million to one. The worst hand possible, not taking a trump suit into account, of course, would be all four deuces, treys, and fours, plus a five.
If the fates ever deal you that hand, it’s time to find another game. Someone is trying to tell you something.
Of course, at least when you get a hand like this, much of the pressure is off. You probably have nothing to do. You will pass throughout the auction. You will never be declarer. And on defense, you will simply follow suit.
But even holding a yarborough, you could still make a mistake. You could still have decisions to make. You might be on opening lead and there may be clues from the auction as to what partner’s best suit is.
Or suppose the auction goes 1NT on your right and 3NT on your left, and partner has king-queen-jack fifth of a suit and an entry, and declarer doesn’t have nine tricks on the go. You can still make a “mistake” even though you have nothing to go on, if you don’t find the killing lead.
In theory on such a blind auction, maybe you should still lead your longest suit, clubs. Or one could also theorize that since opener’s partner didn’t Stayman, the odds are somewhat in favor of partner having length in a major (declarer could still be four-four in hearts and spades). So you flip a mental coin and lead a major.
Diamonds is probably the last choice. One opponent or the other is more likely to have undisclosed length in the minors than in the majors.
Or later on defense you may need to signal count, to give your partner (with all the partnership assets on defense) a road map to declarer’s distribution.
Even with a hand this bad, you still have to pay attention. No naps allowed at the bridge table.
