This is a lesson where I outline a method for counting. Having a good technique for counting is critical for getting better at this game.
I discuss counting by hand pattern, and then a technique for helping you count later — Pre-Counting!
This is a lesson where I outline a method for counting. Having a good technique for counting is critical for getting better at this game.
I discuss counting by hand pattern, and then a technique for helping you count later — Pre-Counting!
Comments
35 responses to “Video: Beginner Lesson – Pre-COUNTING!”
i wish to continue regularl
Thanks Eli! Hi from Sandy Bucher.
Sandy! Hope you are well! I need to get back to I.C to see everyone!
thank you will like to do it again
Thank you.
Thanks very helpful
This was a nice introduction to counting. I have ~175 MPs, and can count trump and one side suit. How do we use this information best during the play of the hand? For instance, we find that a certain side suit splits 4-3 or 5-2. How do we use this information? How do we extend this to 3 suits? I like your style of presentation which is clear and calm. Do you have other lessons?
I am going to continue this Beginner series on youtube, and I will be posting them to BBO as well. I offer individual lesson if interested in other content! I will eventually be making a more in depth series about counting at your level!
This was really helpful. I have taken a number of lessons and no one ever explained this to me. I sense that, if I can do this, it will really help me to play bridge. Thank you, Eli. Looking forward to more lessons. Barb
I do not understand the difference between IMPs and Matchpoints–why would I want to play one as opposed to another? Thank you
Nice job Eli.
Sylvia
i wish to continue regularly
thanks I wish to continue regularly
Thanks 🙂
excellent approach and great explanation. well done. thanks.
I feel this is the right place to start!
cheers,
vlad
Very nice lesson. I’m committed to doing the grunt work! Thank you.
Thank you, hope to hear more.
I use a more intuitive method and it tells me in a flash that if diamonds are not lead I may wall take all thirteen tricks, 12 on a diamond lead.
As a competent player, this mantra of count/count/count, and count some more has long bugged me.
As a beginner, and improving player, I was always told to count, count…. I expunged so much grey-matter trying to count the shape & points on every hand (which is only ~7 mins), and on top of remembering the bidding system, the bids, the cards played, the techniques to winning, I would typically never remember everything; by the end of a session, I would be mentally drained (trying to count 52 cards – or even remembering 26 cards, and counting the distribution of the other 26), and make silly mistakes… which I obviously still do today, but I think (hope) less often, just because I was so brain-dead.
Sure, there are hands when you need to discover something – distribution of shape, or points – and then a discovery play is necessary to establish that information. And that’s when you need to do some counting – but you can often limit that to the information you need – be that shape, or points.
However, counting is not necessary on every hand at all – far from it. And when it’s not necessary, I now know not to give any mental attention to it, which makes the game so much easier.
Here’s a simple hand to demonstrate my point: South, declarer, is in 3NT, and opps have cashed the four top spades (2 & 3 of Hearts discarded from dummy, for anyone that cares); East gets off the lead, playing 2 Clubs (and with that, you have all the information you need).
Spades – none left
Hearts A4
Diamonds T432
Clubs JT9
Spades T
Hearts Q5
Diamonds AKQ
Clubs AKQ
(Sorry, don’t know how to add a diagram)
The amount of counting I realistically need to do on this hand is ONE card: I need to find the J diamonds. That card will fall on a 3-3 diamond split, and if it doesn’t appear when I play my diamonds & my other winners in hand, my only chance is a red-suit squeeze against West: if I don’t see the Jack of diamonds when I play my last black card, I have to assume the King Hearts is now bare (with West), falling under the Ace to establish the Queen, so my discard from dummy will be Ten Diamonds.
Total shape or cards counted: one!
Karert,
Knowing when to count and when not to count is a skill an advanced player develops. I would rather a beginner start practicing a strong technique for counting(just one suit at first) than to not be counting.
Developing the pattern recognition to know when to count and when not to count requires experience. Having your default mode be–“Count” is much better in my opinion.
That’s more than fair enough, cypress. I simply found that when I was learning the game, spending so much effort on learning to count, I missed gaining the experience I really needed – to learn to recognise the best (or only) option on a hand: when to reduce a trump suit; when or how to look for an end-play; even how to manage entries – “low” or “high” would always be the call for dummy, with little or no regard to whether I needed to preserve that 3-spot, so I could return to dummy late in the play, overtaking a 2.
And when I needed to count – when I needed more information.
To my mind, knowing when to count is as much a skill as every other part of the game. Ergo, I don’t think it ever helped me – or helps at all – to be told I always had to keep a count of the hand, to spend our limited thinking by pushing this part of game as hard as I always thought it was on beginners as a primary importance.
I simply think counting is another tool in the armoury, as important to know how to do as a simple squeeze; more important (given the frequency it will be needed) than a backwash squeeze; but when it’s pushed so hard as a primary thing “you absolutely need to be able to do”, I always found that brain-draining – unnecessarily.
I found my game improved greatly when I appreciated that I simply didn’t have to always count the shape & points of opps – when I learnt what cards I needed to look for & when.
It’s important to be able to count, when needed. In my experience, it didn’t help (only hindered) to think this was an essential part of the play on every deal – which is effectively what was drummed into me.
That’s the point I’m making: sometimes we need to watch the split; and occasionally even the pips (a carefully-preserved 2 can allow a entry to a hand opposite); but counting is not necessary on every hand.
Far from it – how many spades did West have in my example hand above? Given the information I provided, impossible to know (maybe only one; maybe more) – but you don’t need that information, so counting was not necessary.
As a beginner, improving player, I would have been turning my mind over, trying to watch the discards from West, as I also kept up with the cards from East. All I really needed to know, or recognise when I see dummy & the losing spade tricks cashed, is that only one/two cards mattered – and I could reduce my mental burden by watching out for one.
And please Eli (have I got the spelling correct, or another faux pas?), don’t get me wrong.
I appreciate the videos from you & other experts – they’re enormously helpful.
It’s this one point – the “need to count” per se on every hand, not the actual advise on “how to count” presented (which is welcome) – that has long been in my craw, as I’ve always found this has been given far more weight than it justifies, and when I realised that, my game improved greatly (I think!). It complicated, rather than freed, my mind in my early days of learning the game
I know counting is important, for beginners & all players, and I do count, but I don’t overdo it – I don’t know or care what shape someone had if I didn’t need to, so I put this in the toolbox alongside, rather than above, all other tools, and these days learn to (only sometimes of course) recognise what tool I need to take-out, rather than have this mental hammer of always counting in my hand.
🙂 good review, nice process
Good lesson, Thanks!
I appreciate the discussion between cypress and Karert. I’m still a little confused about what counting and especially ‘pre-counting’ actually are. Let’s say, I find myself declarer in 4 hearts. Dummy comes down, and I can count how many spades, hearts, diamonds, and clubs that I have as declarer. Then I can calculate how many the opponents have in each suit by subtracting each number from 13. So, for instance, I find that the opponents have 6 spades, 5 hearts, 7 diamonds, and 8 clubs. Is this ‘pre-counting’, Eli? If so, then I assume that the ‘grunt work’ of counting would be to keep track of these numbers as the cards are played, which would certainly take some effort. I can see Karert’s point that there are many other skills to learn as a beginning bridge player, but I agree that being able to count better would improve my game at this point (Advanced Beginner/Low Intermediate). An idea I had after reading this post would be to go back to the hand records that I’ve played on BBO, and try to keep track of the count, first of two suits, and then three suits, and maybe someday, all four suits. I still have to work on endplays, squeezes, defense, and bidding! Thank you both for the ideas!
Hi! At this point I would prompt you to make counting the hand pattern of each suit so automatic that doing the “pre-counting” in the critical suits automatic(easy). If your trump suit is KQxx opposite 10xxx you should be able to immediately put 4+4 together and spit out 4-1 or 3-2. This is the crux of my lesson, which is start thinking of each suit in terms of hand pattern. 🙂
The post from Finesse07 is important, and makes me think…
In my example hand above, if the cards were played as described, BUT East led a Club at trick four (not trick five), the whole dynamics of the hand would change.
In that instance, I want & need to do some mental gymnastics, to recall what cards were played by east & west – points & shape will suddenly matter!
Without any mental effort so far on the hand, I would see three (not four) cards in front of me, all pointing the wrong way – three tricks won by the opponents, so I can lose one more: I have different – more than one – options to play the hand now.
I’m not going to digress onto how or what that would mean – I’ve already taken this thread off-course enough.
The only difference is, with a fairly-rested mind, and when the crux point comes (before I play to trick 4, rather than trick 5), I have to simply recall what cards east & west played at tricks 2 & 3, and possibly count what points each held – if necessary, counting their respective points from trick 1.
That’s why I rest my mind for counting until it matters – I want the mental capacity to have some ability to recall, but only for when I need it.
The simplest method is to count 4 x 13 Simple addition. Surely anyone with
reasonable intelligence can do that 🙂
See, I don’t think PhilG007’s view is helpful at all, particularly not to beginners trying to learn the game.
Of course anyone can count to 4 times 13, reach the obvious 52 – but you never have to do that: count up-to & play at trick 12 will decide what happens at trick 13 (you have no other choice of card to play at trick 13), so I never need to know what to count for the last trick, as counting to 12 tricks (48 cards) will determine what card I keep for the last trick.
(Even this sounds very confusing, and doesn’t help a beginner.)
But counting cards is far from that simple: there were 2 Spades from West, one from North, 2 from East, two from South; and there were 3 Hearts from North, 3 from East, three from South, and 2 from West. And ten seconds later, another card is played, and all those numbers change…
It’s not just counting to 13 (four separate times – counting how the 13 is divided, and then in four different suits) that is difficult, it’s keeping up with fast-moving targets, revising the count(s) every few seconds.
Learning *how* to count is helpful, and Eli’s video contributes to this aim; but learning *when* & *what* to count, can make the game so much easier. On those occasions when you need to work out the shape, you need to have a way of counting this, but you don’t need to think about this when it’s irrelevant, and it’s certainly not easy for a beginner or improving player to do – far more difficult than *a simple addition of 4 x 13* with a moving target, perhaps every 10 seconds or so.
This was terrific thanks. I look forward to seeing more bridge videos by you
Eli’s video gave me the basics in counting. However, Karert’s posts are truly helpful to develope insight to the game of bridge. Thanks and look forward to more.
PLEASE USUSCRIBE ME FROM THIS. THANK YOU
I’m by no means a beginner yet what you just covered has plagued my game forever because I can’t figure out how to count,. Thank you!
This is an interesting thread, so I’ll add some more of my thoughts. As an advanced beginner/low intermediate player with ~175 MPs, I can easily count up my 8 trump in my hand and dummy in a 4H contract. I also know that 68% of the time the Opponents 5 cards will split 3-2, but sometimes they’re 4-1, and very occasionally, they’re 5-0. I sometimes extend this analysis to a second suit where the Opps have 6 cards, and I have 7. I know the Opps cards can split 4-2 (most likely), 3-3 (on a good day), or 5-1 or 6-0. What’s the next step?