Have you ever been at a bridge event and heard someone exclaim: ‘He Grosvenor’d me!’ They are referring to a Grosvenor Coup. Normally, they’ve just realised — too late — that an opponent played an idiotic card in defence that could have enabled them to make their contract. But because it didn’t occur to them that the opponent would make such a blunder, they got a false picture of the hand and chose a line of play that failed.
We’ve all been there. But in fact, a Grosvenor Coup doesn’t refer to a comically bad piece of defence at all. Quite the opposite: it’s a card played with mischievous intent. It was invented around 60 years ago by Philip Grosvenor for the sheer pleasure of annoying another player. In essence, you deliberately give declarer a chance to succeed in a game that’s doomed to fail, knowing he’ll assume that you would never have defended like that if it allowed the game to make — all for the sadistic glee being able to wind him up when he goes down.
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