Response to "John Lowenthal Story--A Follow-up"

Someone brought this post on BridgeWinners to my attention: 

John Lowenthal Story--A Follow-up

In the comments, someone expressed doubt about whether the story was true. That all depends on what you mean by "the story." The deal did occur, and the auction occurred as reported, and John duly made six notrump. That much is true. Anyone who is surprised by this obviously never knew John. The story as I reported it in "Remembering John Lowenthal" is, to the best of my memory, word for word the way John told it himself.

The deal reported in the New York Times, however, as well as the ensuing dialogue, is a construction. Years after the event, Alan Truscott heard the story and asked John if he could remember the deal. John could not. Alan thought it was too good a story to pass up, and he couldn't report the story in his column without an accompanying deal, so he made one up. To amuse himself, he constructed a layout where six notrump made but diamond contracts would fail, though that wasn't true in the actual deal.

There were many more Linda stories, sometimes with the full deal, sometimes not. I wish I had written them down. One I do remember is as follows:

John had observed they were losing a lot of tricks on defense and decided they needed some carding agreements. So, before the session, he said to Linda, "If I take a card from my hand, wave it around in the air and thumb it on the table like this, and if you look at that card and see that it's a high card--like an eight or a nine--then that means I want you to lead that suit." Linda said, "OK."

At some point in the session, John found himself on lead against three notrump. He led something, and declarer won and established dummy's suit. As luck would have it, Linda was winning the trick and John was showing out. It was clear that declarer had the rest of the tricks as soon as he gained the lead. It was also clear that the only tricks the defense might be able to cash were in the spade suit. So John, with jack-nine fourth of spades, took the spade nine out of his hand, waved it around in the air, and thumbed it on the table. 

The opponents were, of course, upset. But Linda was delighted. Her eyes lit up. For the first time all night, she knew what to do. She put the deuce of spades on the table and declarer played the ten. John couldn't believe it. All he was trying to do was to get her to cash her ace if she had it. He never imagined she would underlead it. He took his jack and returned a spade. Linda won her ace, looked around awhile, then shifted, and declarer claimed. The opponents had intended to call the director about John's antics. But when they saw Linda had ace-king-queen fourth of spades, they took pity on John and decided not to. John, meanwhile, was delighted with the result. They had held declarer to four notrump. In the past, he would have made six.

Finally, I do wish to say something about another comment in the BridgeWinners post. Someone said I left BridgeWinners because of a discussion of COVID-19 vaccines. Technically that's true. But more precisely, it was a discussion of COVID-19 vaccine mandates and my opposition to them, for which I was called an idiot. I realize to many, opposition to vaccine mandates is indistinguishable from opposition to vaccines. But I do think the distinction is important. And I wished we lived in a society where freedom of choice was sufficiently valued that the distinction was obvious.