April 23, 2013

My theme this week is counting.  There is a pretty good chance that counting will be my theme next week, and the week after, and the week after that, and …

Counting is incredibly easy and incredibly hard.  There are only 13 cards in a suit.  If you have four hearts, dummy has three hearts, and someone shows out on the second round of the suit, then the fourth player started with five hearts.  Any third grader could do this arithmetic.

Likewise, there are only 13 cards in a hand.  Suppose, in the bidding Jimmy shows five spades, four hearts, and four clubs.  How many diamonds will he have? 

See, it is easy.  Easy, easy, easy.  The trouble is, there is so much stuff to count.  When you declare a hand, you need to keep track of your winners, your losers, the number of cards out in every suit, and many other things.  Any small detail might turn out to be important.  As an example, your contract might hinge on deciding who has the king of spades.  As it happens, East, who passed originally, has already shown up with 10 points.  That means that West holds the king of spades.  With 13 points, East would have opened the bidding.  That is not a very hard inference to draw, but it requires keeping track of all the points played.  Counting is easy, but pretty tedious, and it requires concentration, and practice.

When I first started playing, I would make a pact with myself.  ”Self”, I’d say, ”today you are going to remember every card played, and count out every little detail, for the first five hands.  After that, you can relax and have fun.”  So I would do that every time I played.  After a while, I noticed that I was counting out other hands, and the counting became easier, and I became a much better player.
There is a lot to keep track of during a bridge hand.  Remembering it all gets to be pretty daunting.  Still, it is worth trying.  Practice counting out as much about a hand as your brain will take.  How many hearts are still out?  How many spades did West show in the bidding?  How many spades did West show with the opening lead?  They play standard count, and East played the five, then the two of diamonds.  What does that mean?  And on, and on.  It is hard, and it takes practice.  Keep at it.

There are two hands to discuss this week, and both feature counting.  The first was board 6.  Try it as declarer (rotated, as usual, to make South the declarer):

You opened 2NT in third seat.  Partner bid 3D, transfer to hearts, and then 3NT.  West leads the spade four, using fourth best leads.  East plays the eight and you win the queen.

Here are a bunch of questions for you, and all involve some counting.  These are quite typical of the kinds of things I ask myself before embarking on a line of play.

1.    How many immediate winners do you have?
2.    How many immediate losers do you have?
3.    How many stoppers do you have in your weak suits?
4.    How many more tricks will you need to make your contract?
5.    Where will you get those tricks?
6.    West led a spade.  What do I know about the spade suit?

Let’s answer each question.
1.    8.  Five clubs, 2 spades, and the ace of diamonds.
2.    Only one, the ace of hearts.
3.    You have a diamond stopper and one more spade stopper.
4.    You need one more trick.
5.    Hearts.
6.    Don’t know.  It depends on who holds the spade three.  It looks like West has either four or five spades. 

Key in on my answer to 6.  If West shows up with the spade three later, you will place West with a five card spade suit.  If East ever plays the three, you will figure West for four spades.  That three is an important card, and your mind should be on alert – pay attention, look for the spade three!
At the table, declarer led the heart jack next, and finessed, losing to the queen.  Let’s follow the play a bit more (click on the next button below)

Bells, bells, bells are going off.  There is the key spade three.  You now know that spades are divided four and four.  So you can win your ace of spades, set up a heart trick, and take nine tricks.  In the mean time, the bad folks will win two spades, and two hearts.  Game made.

In practice, declarer ducked this second spade, won the third spade, played another heart, and made 3NT. 
               Why was this wrong?

West might not have been so kind as to continue with spades.  West could win the spade and shift to diamonds, setting up two tricks there to go with one spade, and two hearts.  Here was the full hand:

 

 

Declarer gave West a chance to find a killing shift.  West, however, did nothing wrong in continuing spades.  Those  Q643 in diamonds were hardly overwhelming, and West had no reason to suspect that the clubs were ready to roll.  So declarer made an error and survived.  That happens quite a lot in bridge.  Many, many errors are made, and most of them don’t matter.  Because they don’t matter, we tend to overlook them.  Don’t!  Try to kick yourself every time you make a mistake, even one that didn’t hurt.  If you are that tough on yourself, then, after a while, you’ll find you are making fewer mistakes.  You will never eliminate all your errors.  No one ever plays perfectly.  No one ever goes through a full session with no mistakes.  Bridge is a tough game.  That’s what makes it so much fun.    

My other hand was board 8, a very complex defensive problem

                                    
The auction, with no one vulnerable, went:

 

The first thing that I want to focus on is the diamond suit.  I’ll start with a trick question:  Partner, who has raised diamonds, leads a low diamond and dummy plays the four.  Sitting East, holding AJ876, what diamond should you play?  

                 
It depends!  If this is the layout:

 
East had better play the ace or your side won’t take any diamond tricks at all.

Should the suit look like this:

East must play the jack.  If East plays a low spot, the ten will win a cheap trick.  If East plays the ace, the queen will set up for a winner. 

What if this is the suit?

Now East must play low, the six, seven, or eight.  Any other card lets declarer win two diamond tricks rather than one.

This exact holding decided a major championship last fall.  Bob Hamman, playing with Jeff Meckstroth, played the jack and gave up a second trick in the suit, allowing declarer to make a doubled contract that would have gone down had he played a lower card.  If Bob Hamman, the best player ever, gets these wrong, how are we mortals supposed to work them out?  Bridge is a tough game. 

Sometimes there are helpful clues.  On this hand, partner led the diamond five, typically third best from three or four.  This means that partner must hold two diamonds higher than the five.  We can see every one except for the king and the ten.  So partner has both of those.  As East, we can stick in the six, fully confident that it will win the trick. 

At the table, East played the ace, an error, and returned the suit.  Declarer ruffed that second diamond, as partner played the two.  So, as is so often the case, the bridge error at trick one cost nothing. 

Here is my next question: 

What does partner’s diamond two mean?

That’s another trick question – sorry.  The two means that partner has made a mistake! 

When you lead the five of diamonds holding
                               K1052
you normally will follow with the two next, to tell partner that you had four cards in the suit.  But here, declarer trumped the second diamond, so partner already knows that you have four diamonds.  Playing the two doesn’t tell that to partner, it tells that to the declarer.  Remember, declarer is also trying to count out the hand, and work out the cards.  Maybe, later in the hand, it will be important to declarer to know whether the diamonds were originally 4-5 or 3-6.  Good!  Let’s not help out.  That diamond two is like a precious baby.  Protect her, hoard her.  Hold on to that two for as long as possible. 

Consider this layout of diamonds:

 

West leads the diamond five, and East correctly plays the six.  East can now return any diamond except the two!  That deuce must be guarded and hidden.  Keep it out of sight for as long as you can.

 
Back to the defensive problem. 

Declarer ruffed the second diamond, and played a trump to the ace, and a trump back to the king, dropping partner’s queen.  Rats!  Why can’t they ever take losing finesses against me.  Declarer now leads the heart seven from hand.  Partner plays the six, upside down count, and dummy plays the queen.  Since the four and three of hearts are missing, partner may be trying to show an odd number of hearts.  Or, maybe not.  In any event, the spotlight is on you.
What do you know about declarer’s hand? 

How many tricks will declarer make? 

Can we stop ten tricks? 

Come up with a plan!

I’ve covered quite enough ground for the week, so I’ll let you puzzle over this.  I’ll come back to it next week.