|
Matchpointer Online
|
|||||||||
|
Matchpointer Online :: Illustrative Hands
|
Illustrative HandsThere's no better way to illustrate bridge than with instructive hands. We invite local teachers to submit their favorite lesson deals to this section.
Got an good lesson deal to share? Send it to us, we'll be happy to add it in and give you credit! A Hand From the April Mentor-Mentee Game by Bruce McIntyre
Somewhere on my bookshelf there is a bridge book that I stuggled through several years ago, getting most of the hands wrong but happy to have gotten a few right. I often read bridge books several times, but this one is consigned to the shelf because I am just too lazy to put myself through the rigor once more. But last weekend a deal came up which made me remember the book, so I must have learned something! I'll tell you about the book later. First off, I should say that you should sign up for the next Mentor-Mentee game (check the front page for dates). It's a fun team game with newer players partnering more experienced players, and we have a lot of fun four times a year on a Saturday afternoon. I'm probably the worst mentor possible. My playing style paints an imaginary goal crease line around my area of the table, and anything that happens outside that line has to be a 16-ton weight major-league error for me to even notice. I have enough trouble with what happens inside the crease to be too concerned about what goes on outside it. Once many years ago a partner raised my 1NT to game and quietly tabled a balanced 3-count. I spent several minutes trying to find a reasonable route to nine tricks before I noticed dummy was a bit light. When I do make a comment it usually turns out to be wrong. Last Saturday, my partner used a Bergen Raise sequence to get to 4♠, and thought this would be a good result. I wrapped up eleven routine tricks and said that it was quite routine to get to 4♠ in almost any system and there would probably be no swing. Of course we won 13 IMPs on the board somehow... Anyway, here is your hand:
Both sides vulnerable (I'm guessing; it doesn't matter). Partner passes, RHO opens 1♥. You overcall 2♣ and LHO makes a negative double. Partner passes and RHO rebids 2♥. You pass and LHO tries 2NT. Partner passes and RHO raises to 3NT. Pretty simple auction. LHO has a spade suit and probably some club and diamond cards; RHO has a minimum opener with a heart suit that may be rebiddable, but sometimes isn't. Negative doubles can cause awkward rebids. Partner leads the nine of clubs. Here is what you see:
As suspected, dummy had an awkward call after the negative double. Without support for spades or clubs, the only options were 2NT with no spade stopper (risky), 2♠ with three-card support (riskier), and rebidding the rather ordinary heart suit. Sometimes you have to choose the least bad bid, and dummy did well here. The raise to 3NT on this rather minimum hand is quite aggressive! Letting this one make will probably be a very poor result, unless declarer has severely underbid. The opening lead of the 9♣ gets the queen from dummy, the ace from you, and the 3 from declarer. You continue with the 6♣ and declarer wins the king in hand, killing the ten in dummy, partner playing the deuce. Partner does not have the missing jack of clubs: he would not lead the nine from J92 in your suit. Declarer has a club stopper. Declarer now leads the 4♦ toward the dummy. Partner takes the ace and continues with the 5♣, declarer winning the jack, pitching a spade from dummy. With me so far? Declarer has two club tricks and we have two tricks: A♣ and A♦. You have four more black-suit winners in your hand to put the contract where it deserves to be. Your hand at this point is down to: ♠AKT9 ♥72 ♦9 ♣87. At trick five, declarer leads a diamond to dummy and cashes the K-Q♦, then comes back to his hand with the ace of hearts, then cashes the jack of diamonds. This brings you down to five cards. What have you kept?
Think about it.
The book on my bookshelf is Discarding by British writer Danny Roth. Roth's books are different from others in that he tries very hard not to give away the answer to a problem in its presentation. In almost every Roth book, the rules are stated up front: do not guess; work it out from the clues and give a complete answer. Several times in each book (just as players will find at the table) there is a trap hand, where the presentation seems to be about what card to play next, but the answer will require you to have stated how you played previous tricks as well! Even in a book where the very title sets anyone reading it to be wary of every discard they make, there are a few well-laid traps! Roth lays down in most of his books a system of 'roll-calls' for players to work out what is happening in a hand. These are:
This, as you can see, is quite different from "second-hand low" or "cover an honour with an honour," but once you sit down in your favorite chair and apply it to a few hands, you will begin to think like an expert. Like physical training, it will improve your bridge game. You'll begin to recognize situations where you have a fair bit of information and take a bit of time to think through them. Soon you will get into the habit of putting the pieces together as the hand gets revealed, and you'll be doing it almost automatically. The answers you get will surprise you!
Back to the hand. You follow to the first diamond and to the heart trick back to declarer's hand, but you have to make a discard on the queen and jack of diamonds. Several things can happen here:
Which is right? None of the above. The correct answer is to have taken the time earlier to go through the roll-calls so that you will know what to do now!
At the point when declarer leads toward dummy's king of diamonds, what do we know? Declarer has three clubs, and probably four spades and likely four diamonds (confirmed later) for the negative double, and therefore probably two hearts. He almost certainly must have the Q♠ to have enough for his bids. Declarer does NOT have the jack of hearts or the hand would be over by now: he would have unblocked the A-J&hearts before playing diamonds. Partner therefore has four hearts to the jack, and declarer can make ten tricks with a heart finesse. Our objective should be to convince declarer to play for the drop.
At the table, my partner pitched a heart on the second diamond trick. Holding Ax opposite KQTxx, there were two plays: play for a 3-3 split, or play for my hand to have four to the jack. Brian Stone correctly deduced that a defender with Jxx of hearts would not pitch a heart, in case declarer chose to finesse after winning the ace. He called for the ten of hearts and made +630 on the hand for a big swing. Would he have done so if my partner had discarded a black card? Maybe. But the decision would have been more difficult. If you actually do hold ♥Jxx and figure declarer for ♥Ax, now would be the time to pitch down to the bare jack. Declarer will drop it or finesse into it: your discard might induce him to try the finesse. The key is to recognize early enough that hearts is the key suit and avoid doing something that will make declarer's decisions in the key suit easier. What a tangled web we sometimes need to spin on defense! Very interesting hand, and a very nice play by Brian Stone to make it for a nice swing. My partner, Sharene Jansen, played incredibly well all day (as far as I could see, anyhow!), and it took me several minutes to work out what went wrong, and that even with another discard, 3NT might still have been made.
by Bruce McIntyre
This deal, from a newspaper column, makes a good illustration of how an expert thinks. I'll give you the problem first, and then try to examine the steps that would go through a good player's head: North (Dummy): ♠ A 4 ♥ 8 7 6 5 4 ♦ A K T 7 ♣ 4 2 South (Declarer): ♠ K Q J 3 ♥ K Q J T 3 ♦ 2 ♣ A J 7 West leads the king of clubs against your contract of 6♥. Not so fast! If you pull trumps, West will win and cash the Q♣. Careful! If you play three rounds of spades, discarding your club loser from dummy, that will work. But if you play a trump next, a defender might win his singleton A♥ and lead a fourth round of spades. The other defender will overruff dummy with the 9♥! What plan succeeds? The biggest surprise to me when I gave this hand to bridge players (without the hints above) was this: new players, average players, and even some good players would get some distance down the road, but only the expert players would solve all of the problems. Here's what the roadmap in declarer's brain looks like:
Most players get this far and go down one. A true expert goes just a bit further before playing...
Congratulations! You just made a great score! |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||