Couple Therapy

When a married couple has problems in their marriage – they go to couple's therapy.

John and Barbara are not married. They are not even a couple. They are just Bridge partners, who have been playing together for a long time. Well... long time in total. They took many breaks over time, when they stopped playing together after harsh arguments and after "divorces" so vocal that everyone in the club knew they had sworn to never play together again. Each time this happened, they were so hostile to one another that they didn’t even say hello.

But after some time, after they managed to get into fights and arguments with every other partner I tried to match them with, they always got back to playing together.

"How come they are together again?" people would ask me. "I did couple therapy with them," I'd say without batting an eye.

"You think it will hold?", asked the skeptic ones (which were about everyone...).

“Absolutely!" I'd answer, looking straight into their eyes. "I even got a wedding invite from them..."

As both of them always looked for mistakes in their partner's play, and commented all the time (often wrong analysis), nobody wanted to play with them, which was the real reason they kept going back to playing together.

And so, here is the hand that caused their final divorce.

Barbara managed to produce a fabulous defense, and John, with incredible talent... totally ruined it:

Dealer North - None vulnerable:


John lead the ♥10 (which, according their agreement is top of sequence or two higher honors, so he has either 109xxx or AJ10xx).

Declarer won with the ♥Q in dummy and asked for the ♣Q. To her surprise, Barbara's ♣K won the trick.

Counting points, she concluded that since dummy has 14 points, she has 10 and declarer has 10-11, her partner should have around 5 points, 4 of which consist in the ♣A (else declarer would not let her win the King).

Therefore, the ♥10 lead was from top of sequence, as there is no room for the ♥AJ in his hand. That means 2 Club tricks are guaranteed, and in order to set 3NT, defense needs 3 Spade tricks. From the bidding it is obvious that declarer has exactly 4 Spades.

After some thought, Barbara found the only defense which sets: the ♠2!

John exploded: "What are you doing??!! Play spade to dummy's strength, and did you forget that declarer bid 1♠? You have no idea how to play this game!" he added with his typical vulgar tone.

I happened to be standing next to their table and I warned John (for the millionth time) to stop talking during the play, to stop being rude and actually... to stop talking at all.

The play continued:

Declarer won the spade trick cheaply with the ♠6, continued with Clubs, and John, upon winning the ♣A on the 3rd round, played back a... Heart.

This time it was Barbara's turn to burst: "You have no more spades to play? Play a spade, I win my ♠AQJ and set the contract. Why don't you continue my line of defense?"

I was called to the table once again and ruled 11 tricks for declarer.

And that was it. After this last fight, I fear there is no "couple therapy" that can save them...