[blml] De Whale

[Herman De Wael]

Harald Skjæran wrote:

> Here I have to tell about a true incident from a long way back in time.
> Hans Olof Hallén was playing a tournament with a new partner. They had
> discussed quite a lot, but not everything.
> 
> On one deal Hans Olof opened 1S and his partner responded 4H - this
> was unfortunately undiscussed. There's two possible meanings to the
> call - either a lot of hearts or no hearts. Hans Olof didn't have a
> clue, so he inspected his own hand. He held a heart void, so the odds
> favoured his partner holding a long suit. Thus he passed, and his
> partner had to declare the 0-0 fit. :-)
> 

Very funny, but what does it teach us:

A) if you are guessing wrong, there is nothing you can do to avoid a 
bad result - let's therefore concentrate on cases where the guess was 
right;

B) The partner was obviously gambling that Hans-Olof would understand, 
possibly from some part of the discussion that he thought was 
relevant, there is therefore at least some indication that their 
system included splinters; If Hans-Olof had held, say, 4 hearts, he 
would have bid spades again (or something in the minors); I'm sure the 
director would not have gone looking for precisely what it was that 
made him think 4H was a splinter.

C) We don't know that if that had been the case, Hans-Olof would have 
alerted and explained that he thought it would be splinter.

The story is great but I'm not sure it proves any point.

-- 
Herman DE WAEL
Antwerpen Belgium
http://www.hdw.be