Think Like a Bridge Player

I am doing an on-line lesson with a client (no, I do not do many of these...too time-consuming). In advance, I asked him, "what would you like to work on?" He said, "what I would really like is to learn to think like a bridge player." Gulp. "Let me think about that." That sounds to be about as hard a thing to prepare to teach as anything there is. I try. I prepare a couple of hands from Killing Defense. I think that book is the best introduction to counting and information assimilation there is, and that's some of the core of "thinking as a bridge player." He spends a good deal of time on the two hands and gets them right, which is encouraging. But setting up lots of those will take forever, so we do some random hands with focus on defense. Some have useful lessons, but to my surprise, one contains massive counting and reconstruction opportunities. How fortunate.

All vulnerable, we see

	J86 AJ542 K53 94

	A9752 8 J64 KJ65

LHR	Dummy	RHR	Declarer
-	-	1	1
2	3	All Pass

Since we are playing against robots, we can take as much time as we want. I was the 1

overcaller, but he gets to play the hands by just telling me what cards to play, so he gets to play this one.

We get the 7 opening lead, and he immediately plays the ace from dummy. I stop him and ask, "what's your plan?" He says, "draw trump." "That'll probably get you three spades and a heart. Maybe a diamond. That's down four or five. Not a very optimistic target. What do you know about East's [RHR's] hand?" "He probably has a heart honor." "Good, LHR would have led a high heart if he had both honors, so right, RHR has a high heart. Anything else." "I don't know." "How many clubs does he have?" "Let's see...we have six clubs, so they have seven. He has at least three of them." "How many does LHR have?" "Oh! He has to have at least four for his raise, so opener must have three!" "Right! How about the heart suit?" "We have five, four have been played, so they have five left." "Think about how they started, not how they are now. You can get to now fairly easily from the initial distribution, but it's harder to go the other way. How did hearts originally split?" "Could be anything...oh, I see! If LHR had four, he would have made a negative double." "Right, and opener would not have opened 1 with five hearts, so they are?" "Responder had three and opener had four." "Right. It's convenient to think of this information as two numbers, the first's being the number held on your left, and the second the number held on your right, so they started out 3-4. Had responder had the fourth heart, they would have been 4-3. In this notation, what were clubs?" "4-3." "Right. Now we know East's distribution in two suits. He was something-four-something-three. What possibilities could he have for the other two suits?" "He couldn't have four diamonds, so he had four hearts and three of everything else." "Again, just tracking them as suits in order helps memory; that's 3-4-3-3 shape. But do we really know that? He could have had four spades and been 4-4-2-3. But if he was, and if LHR had a small singleton spade, he would be looking at KQ10x and know they have at least 22 HCP, so he would have doubled us, so either responder has a singleton spade honor or opener was, more likely, 3-4-3-3. Even if responder's singleton spade is the ten, opener probably would have doubled us, so it's a good bet opener is 3-4-3-3, but we should leave open the possibility that he's 4-4-2-3." "Cool! Anything else?" "Yes. How many HCP does opener have?" "I don't know. At least 11. Could be anything." "How many does responder have for his limit raise, assuming he's balanced. If opener is 3-4-3-3, responder is 2-3-4-4, so he is probably balanced" "Probably 10." "Right. And robots don't usually open 4333 11-counts other than ace-king-ace, so what's the high card distribution?" "Aha! Opener has 12, and responder has 10." "Right. But only probably. Robots, just as real people, sometimes do something weird, but that's a good start. Can we tell anything about the location of the high cards?" "Well, responder didn't have both heart honors." "Right, so the heart honors are either split or opener has both. How about clubs?" "I don't know." "Why didn't responder lead clubs, the suit they both bid?" "Why?" "Probably because he has the ace. He might have AQ, but from Q10xx, he'd probably lead them, so we can place the A on the left." "And responder probably doesn't have both spade honors." "Maybe. He might not have led from KQ doubleton in trumps hoping to score them both, but if he has the A, odds are he doesn't have both spades, but let's not assume that for now. So a possible hand for opener is K10x Kxxx Axx Qxx. That's 12 HCP, but there are lots of other constructions possible. Does any of this give you an idea for a plan?" "Probably I want to finesse clubs, playing responder for the ace." "Right. And if you ruff a club in the short hand, that'll create another trick. What will happen if you ruff a fourth club?" "It'll get overruffed." "By the long hand; if spades are 2-3, then that ruff will also gain a trick. Suddenly, we are up to four spades, the A, a club, and a club ruff. That's down two, not so great, but it's way better than down five. Maybe we can get them to give us a diamond trick or one of the honors might be well-placed. That'll get us to down one, which seems about as well as we can hope to do, though maybe something good will happen and we'll find another trick and make." "OK, I'll play a club from dummy!"

I win the heart (finally!) as everyone follows. He calls for the 9. No big deal; I don't see its having any value later in the play, so I play it. RHR follows; partner calls for the jack, and it loses to the A. Good! LHR continues with a club to the queen and king, and he ruffs a club in dummy as both follow, of course. He ruffs a heart in hand and plays the last club. LHR covers and he ruffs with the J. RHR overruffs with queen and (cool!) shifts to the 8. LHR wins the ace and continues with a low diamond. Partner wins the king and sees:

	8 J54 5 —

	A975 — J —

He ruffs a heart and goes into the tank. I chime in, "it almost certainly doesn't matter what you do now, but if you exit with a diamond, no matter how the cards lie, you'll get out for down one." He does that, and RHR wins a plays a heart. He ruffs low, gets overruffed, and can claim the last two tricks.

Down one isn't a great result, but it's not too bad since we start with two trumps and two aces to lose and nowhere to put a diamond loser.

It's pretty surprising how close the original reconstruction came. The whole hand was

	J86 AJ542 K53 94
103 Q107 A972 A872		KQ4 K963 Q108 Q103
	A9752 8 J64 KJ65

It turns out that trumps lie so well that an intrafinesse will bring in the suit for one loser. With the

A onside and the clubs as expected, eight tricks are not really all that hard to obtain, but the experience of working out the hand was fun for partner.