When John Våge sent in his first article to this site he made a tantalising comment about another hand featuring the Norwegian star Geir Helgemo. Naturally we dismissed this as the raving of a madman and went back to polishing our statue of Geir (which stands just to the left of the portrait of Michael Rosenberg). It was surely heresy — like saying Pele tripped over the ball, or Geoffrey Boycott got caught on the boundary. But John delivered on his promise and the result is two excellent articles which we'll publish this week and next. Savour them, for they sure won't happen that often!

Having played a lot against, and on a couple of occasions with, Geir I still haven't seen him make an outright mistake. The closest was probably in a private teams match. We had both overbid (I more than him), and he ended up in 6X. That went 4 down (-800) after two wrong guesses, while our teammates (both internationals) conceded -590 in 4X. This, however is the story I was thinking of:

In this season's Norwegian 1st division we met what in practice is our national team (all six have played one or more Bermuda Bowl finals). Since we are all friends and clubmates the atmosphere at the table was very light. My screenmate was Tor Helness, who won both the mixed pairs and the mixed teams at the last European Championships. This was the last board of the match, we had played well (we even won the match, in spite of this board) and at this point Tor's partner had played six hands in the last half, all going down.

With no-one vulnerable my partner Petter Tøndel opened 1, Tor bid 1 and I made a weak raise to 3. When the tray returned with 3 from Tor's partner and a pass from Petter, Tor pointed down his scorecard and said with a voice so loud that they could hear it at the other end of the room:

"He went down on that, that, that, that, that and that board. The man just doesn't take any tricks! 3 is forcing, but I pass!"

His partner, who we could hear laughing at the other side of the screen, was of course Geir Helgemo!

While Petter was pondering over his lead, Tor and I had a short talk at our side of the screen. We quietly discussed the likely result in 3 (even if he was dummy, we didn't look at each-other's hands), and agreed that there were probably either 8 or 11 tricks! Partner's lead was the A, and this was the full deal:

I played an encouraging 2, and partner (who had made a disciplined pass and would have doubled anything Tor bid above 3) continued diamonds. Geir ruffed and played a small spade. Petter won the King and, as we can see, declarer gets only 8 tricks if we cash our clubs and take the club ruff/promotion. Petter instead tried a forcing defence, and continued with another diamond without cashing the A (which would be correct if Geir had better clubs and worse hearts). Geir ruffed and played the Q. A beginner may have refused to cover, still holding declarer to 8 or 9 tricks (he's got no communications), but Petter demonstrated that he masters the basics ("always cover an honour with an honour!"). Now Geir could cash the Q, return to the J, draw the last trump and discard his clubs on the established hearts, claiming 11 tricks just as Tor and I had predicted!

Our teammates, junior internationals Erik Eide and Espen Lindqvist, collected 2 down in 3 NT (+100) against Grøtheim - Aa, but even though we lost this board we won the match. To further illustrate the level of Norwegian bridge at the top, in other matches several pairs made game East/West on this board, in spite of the two minor problems, namely too few tricks and too many losers....