Even though he invariably admonished his offspring to trust their father, Poppa Jake sometimes found their confidence to be too much of a good thing.  Big Rube in particular had the sometimes-annoying habit of bidding “one for the road” when the path to success was marred by considerable obstacles.

Poppa Jake brought up the subject one night, sitting around the campfire after their evening meal of fire-roasted lamb and fresh herbs, washed down with mint tea and matza-ball soup.  “You all have to stop overbidding,” the patriarch said, fixing his gaze on his oldest son without mentioning Rube's name.

“Poppa, you always complain about that,” said Rube, taking up the verbal cudgel for all of his brothers.  “But then you make the contract.”

Poppa Jake still had something to say.  “Perhaps, but it often takes a great deal of skill, not to speak of more than a little bit of luck.”  Using a small twig, he deftly sketched out two hands from a recent match against nomadic chief Kalbert and Kalbert's son.

“Perhaps you remember the auction,” he said looking straight into Rube's eyes to indicate his disapproval.  East and I both passed and Kalbert, in the West seat, opened 1♠.  You doubled and East tried 1NT.  Holding: ♠J9864 ♥Q964 ♦83 ♣64, that was more than enough for me, so I passed, West bid 2♠ and you doubled.”

The old man seemed to be in pain as he continued.  “Even my 3♥ didn't satisfy you.   You bid 4♥ all by yourself.”

The members of the clan gazed at the layout.  There was no questioning the deductive powers of Poppa Jake, but making 10 tricks out of that mess seemed entirely out of the question, an undertaking comparable to making water flow from solid rock, or dividing the waters of the sea barring the path from the desert to their destination in the Land of the Big River.

“Did you get some help from the defense, or perhaps a little bit of good fortune from the Man Upstairs you're always talking about?” asked one of the women.  Poppa Jake's answer to Zilpah, the former maid of his first wife, Leah, was respectful -- even if the answer was kind of obvious. After all, she had fathered two of his sons.

“The Man Upstairs, as you call him, isn't interested in card games,” he said.  “But yes, there was some good fortune involved.”

The assembly listened intently as their leader told his tale.  “The opening lead was the ♠K, East playing the ♠4.  I played the ♠6, and West took some time to think before continuing with the ♥K to North's ace at the second trick.”

Poppa Jake continued, “The ♥K was less of a gift than it seemed.  Forcing an entry to my hand for a heart finesse was a dicey proposition, so I might have played ♥A anyway as a last resort."

“But enough of that debate. At this point,  I tried to picture the East hand.  He had to have some values for his 1NT over Rube's double, in all probability at least a couple of diamond honors. And I needed to ruff one or two diamonds to establish some winners in that suit.  At trick three I played a low diamond won by East's jack.  To eliminate ruffs, he returned a heart to dummy's ♥8 with West, as expected, showing out.  I cashed dummy's ♦A, ruffed a diamond with the ♥9 as West discarded a spade, and ruffed a spade with the ♥J.”

Poppa Jake halted his narrative, to let the situation sink in.  “My plan now was to ruff the fourth diamond with the ♥Q, setting up East's ♥10 but also dummy's long diamond. If the club finesse was on, as it stood to be from West's opening bid (even if it was in third seat), the contract would make.

“So I ruffed the diamond and was about to play a small club when it dawned on me that that I didn't need the finesse at all,” he said.  The audience, which always recognized that father knows best, nodded approval.  “I simply played a spade and faced my hand, which by this time had lost what little worth it had at the start of proceedings. East, who was faced with the choice of winning the ♥10 on this trick by overruffing dummy, or on the next trick when I put him in with dummy's last heart, was endplayed in clubs.”

After the applause subsided, Poppa Jake continued: “Of course, a club shift from West at trick 2 would have had me in deep, deep trouble.  The fact that he didn't make that shift was my good fortune...or perhaps, if you want to believe it, help from upstairs.”

©Hanan Sher, 2011. Hanan Sher is a retired Israeli-American journalist who lives in Jerusalem.  He has written bridge columns and articles for newspapers and magazines in Israel and Europe, and is reverent only about Terence Reese, Hugo Yorke-Smith, and Marshall Miles.