32519, on 2012-January-26, 14:24, said:
The Merrimac Coup describes the intentional and deliberate sacrifice of a high card, generally an honour card, with the object of eliminating a vital and necessary entry in the hand of the opponent, usually the dummy.
http://www.bridgeguy...rimac_coup.html
This deal occurred in the Main Bridge Club earlier today. It may be easy to criticise North for jumping to 4
♥ with his second bid. That became irrelevant and South now had an awkward contract to make.
West led the
♣5 attempting to mislead declarer. The queen from dummy was overtaken by the king. East returned the
♣ jack believing that the
♣5 was a singleton wanting to give West a
♣ ruff. As it turned out, it ended up being an unintentional execution of the Merrimac Coup. South’s only hope of reaching dummy to run the
♣ suit had been removed!
I understand the thrust of your post, but I cannot accept this as a Merrimac Coup.
One of the requirements for a Merrimac Coup, as you stated in the first sentence of your post, and as I paraphrase here, is the intentional and deliberate sacrifice of a high card with the object of eliminating an entry to one of the opponent's hands. The return of the
♣J does eliminate an entry to the North hand; however, it is not a sacrifice of a high card. The
♣J was already dead, as it would fall under the
♣A whenever the declarer chose to play that card.
The classic Merrimac Coup position would be like this:
Suppose South is declaring 3NT. West leads the
♦K. On seeing the dummy, West sees that the
♥A is the only entry to the North hand for declarer to enjoy the club suit once West's
♣A is knocked out. But West can take care of that by shifting to the
♥K at trick 2. West sacrifices his
♥K, giving declarer an extra heart winner, but beats 3NT by denying declarer an entry to the club suit. Declarer cannot counter the play of the
♥K by ducking, as West can then just continue with another round of hearts, taking the
♥A out of dummy before the club suit can be established.
There is another version of the Merrimac Coup. Suppose there were a third heart in dummy, so West could not remove the
♥A from dummy by continuing the suit if declarer ducked. However, if ducking the
♥K established the setting trick for the defense (say, for example, declarer led a side suit A at trick one against a slam, and then shifted to the
♥K), declarer still cannot duck. So declarer has a choice of ducking to maintain an entry to dummy at the cost of establishing the setting trick for the defense or winning the
♥A and losing his entry to dummy.
I executed a Merrimac Coup on the first board of a sectional pair game against Jim Linhart. I was playing with a pick-up partner of somewhat dubious skills. After the hand was over, and Jim congratulated me on my play, my partner asked if we would have beaten the contract one more trick if I hadn't played the high honor on air.
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