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Seeing through cards #11

Knowing how to ask yourselves the right questions and then answer them is the key to improve your chances on any bridge hand, be it as declarer or as defender.

I’ll give you a hand below, and a series of questions – like a riddle! Try to answer these questions by yourself. Then look at the answers, which will be presented together with the full deal.

At the end we’ll summarize a few important “Things to remember” for each problem. Enjoy!

Dealer West, N-S Vulnerable


Against 4♥ West led the ♣K.

  1. You and partner have 24 points together. How do you explain that both opponents bid? How are points divided between your opponents?
  2. How many tricks and losers do you count?
  3. What is your best chance to make extra tricks or throw your losers?
  4. What is the danger?
  5. How will you play to avoid this danger?

  1. You and partner have 24 points together. How do you explain that both opponents bid? How are points divided between your opponents?
    One (or both) of your opponents bid light. Likely opener did so too, if he has a distributional hand.

  2. How many tricks and losers do you count?
    We can count 9 tricks: 6 Hearts, 2 Diamonds and 1 Club. And 4 losers: 3 Spades and 1 Diamond.

  3. What is your best chance to make extra tricks or throw your losers?
    Try to establish the Diamonds and throw losers on the good Diamonds. West opened 1♠ so playing Spade to the ♠K has a very small chance to succeed.

  4. What is the danger?
    Having a sure Diamond loser, the danger is to lose the third Diamond to East (if East has 3 diamonds), get a Spade return from him (♠Q here) and by thus lose a Diamond and all 3 Spades.

  5. How will you play to avoid this danger?
    To avoid East (who is the dangerous hand) – let the ♣K win the trick! That way, West is still on lead and the Spade suit is still protected.

    If West continues with another Club – Throw a Diamond on the ♣A, play ♥K and Heart to the ♥A, continue with ♦AK, ruff the third Diamond and play a third Heart to dummy’s ♥J. Throw 2 Spade losers on your promoted ♦87, and claim 11 tricks, losing just 1 Club and 1 Spade.

Things to remember


a. The rule of 20: This rule needs to be agreed by both partners. According to this rule, a hand is worth opening if the number of cards in the two longest suits + the sum of high card points is 20 or more, but ONLY if the points are in the two long suits. So, for example, if you have 10 points, and 5-5 (like West’s hand here) or 6-4 or 7-3 in two suits, and your points are in the long suits, the hand is worth opening! Same with 11 points and 5-4 or 6-3. According to this rule, a hand of 12 points with a 4-3-3-3 distribution is not worth opening 🙂 Yes, points are not everything. Distribution is very important and points in your long suits give power to the small cards in your long suit, and give a good chance for them to become potential tricks, especially (but not only) if one of these suits becomes trump (but long suits are useful in NT too).

b. To avoid the “danger hand”, you need sometimes to use special techniques, like loser on loser, or, like here, lose a Club trick on purpose, to keep West on the lead, so that later you can throw a Diamond loser and avoid losing the lead to East.

c. Developing a side suit via ruffs is an important tool to make extra tricks, when you hold a long side suit. Diamonds here has excellent potential for extra tricks. However, when established, you need to make sure you have an entry to that suit (via trump here).

d. It is very important to analyze the bidding. Counting that opponents have too little for what they promised (West promised 12 +, East showed 6-10… So how come they only have 16 points together?) – It should be clear that one of them has a distributional hand, in this case most likely the opener. So as he didn’t rebid Spades, he is likely to have long Clubs too. That means he is most likely to be short in Diamonds. From there you can infer that if You play ♦AK and a third Diamond, hoping to lose it to West… that probably won’t work.