Famous Coups

[42]

Hi!

What do you think of the idea to make a collection of famous coups? Sometimes people talk about the Vienna Coup, Morton's Fork, Scissors Coup, etc., and perhaps the one or other never heard that before and therefore does not know what is meant by this and how it works.

 

Yesterday a Crocodile Coup was possible:

[hv=d=n&v=e&n=sk2hq643da83cak42&w=sq107hkjdj10765c1085&e=saj9ha752d42cq973&s=s86543h1098dkq9cj6]399|300|Scoring: MP

1NT pass 2♥! pass

2♠! all pass

[/hv]

1. ♣ 3, J, 5, 2

2. ♠ 3, 7, K, A

3. ♥ A, 10, J, 6

4. ♥ 7, 8, K, 3

5. ♣ 10, A, 7, 6

6. ♠ 2, >9<, 4, 10 East must rise with the ♠J and give his partner a ruff in ♥, scoring his 9 later.

The Crocodile Coup works like this: like a crocodile opening his jaws, a defender in 2. seat wins a trick with an unnecessarily high card, preventing his partner from being thrown in.

[EricK]

There is already a list on Wikipedia:

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coup_%28bridge%29

 

Only a few of the coups listed have articles/examples attached to them. Maybe those of us with the inclination can fill some more in, or expand on (or improve) the definitions there.

 

Eric

[mr1303]

There's also a coup of the month page on www.poorbridge.com. Not quite the same thing as you had in mind however.

 

The Myles coup was actually first performed against me and Michael Clarke (the author of the article) and neither of us realised it

[Finch]

The Wikipedia list is missing the Lazarus coup. This is a defensive play such as the following:

 

[hv=n=skqj109xxhjxdaxc10x&w=sxxhxxxdjxxxckxxx&e=saxhqxxxdkxxxcaxx&s=sxxhakxxdqxxcqjxx]399|300|3NT by South[/hv]

 

(I've just made this up, don't tell me the errors in it)

 

Club lead to the Ace.

King of diamonds switch (just to get another coup in).

Second round of spades taken by the Ace.

Low heart switch, run round to the Jack, bringing dummy back to life.

 

When genuine rather than a mis-defence this has various fancy names (e.g. stepping stone squeeze).