Your Weekly Ezine from Wanttoplaybridge.com
Volume 1 Issue 5
Welcome!
Welcome to the
fifth
issue of '13 Tricks' my new weekly ezine for subscribers to the wanttoplaybridge.com website.
Thank you for subscribing to 13 Tricks
- I hope that you will find the various tips, puzzles and readers
clinics useful over the coming year.
Don't forget that your subscription
entitles you to ask me any bridge related question, so don't hesitate to
contact me at
david@wanttoplaybridge.com with your questions and queries.
Who Is David Clement?
Following on from last week, here's some
more information on me and my life.
After I took early retirement from the
Civil Service (nearly 20 years ago!), I wasn't really sure what I wanted
to do. I knew that I wouldn't be happy sitting around the house,
so I involved myself in some voluntary work - as well as doing some
accountancy work.
This voluntary work has led me in some
interesting directions and I'm still involved with two Northern Ireland
organisations. Most interestingly, I am involved with The Ulster
Historic Foundation which is an organisation that primarily tries to
help people track down their Irish and Northern Irish ancestors.
I have always been interested in genealogy and have had some success in
the past tracking my family tree back to the 18th century.
My
other real passion is doing jigsaw puzzles! Most years, one of my
children will buy me a 5,000 or 6,000 piece jigsaw for Christmas or my
birthday. That will keep me happy for hours!
Well, I'll leave it there for this week -
more again next week!
PUZZLE NO. 1
You haven't been getting very good cards tonight when all of a sudden it is your
turn to deal, and you pick up your cards, and just look what you have turned up! -
| ♠ Spades | A K Q |
| ♥ Hearts | A K Q |
| ♦ Diamonds | A K Q |
| ♣ Clubs | 6 5 3 2 |
What is your opening bid?
Click here for the answer at the end of the this eZine!
OTHER SYSTEMS
To carry on from last time, I am just going to mention the Precision system of bidding. As its name implies, it endeavours to provide greater precision in defining one's hand. The big thing to notice with Precision is that an opening bid of 1 Club means that that hand has a minimum of 16 points. You don't have to have a Club suit, or indeed any Clubs at all, just 16 points minimum. OK?
It follows that because the 1 Club denotes a point count then the opener must have another opportunity to describe their hand. Partner therefore, on hearing the opening 1 Club has to say something. The rule is that if you have 8 points or more, you bid your best suit or No Trumps as the case may be, but if you have fewer than 8 points you respond 1 Diamond. Again this does not imply that you have any Diamonds - it is just a point count again.
Hopefully this little note will help you when you meet opponents who are playing precision. I will come back to the system in due course or perhaps add a section to my course when I have the time to do it.
BIDDING
Take a look at this deal. North is Dealer.
|
North |
|||||
| ♠ Spades | A | ||||
| ♥ Hearts | A K 10 6 4 | ||||
| ♦ Diamonds | Q 9 8 | ||||
| ♣ Clubs | A 10 7 4 | ||||
|
West |
East |
||||
| ♠ Spades | 5 4 3 2 | ♠ Spades | 10 9 7 6 | ||
| ♥ Hearts | 7 5 | ♥ Hearts | 9 8 | ||
| ♦ Diamonds | K 10 4 3 | ♦ Diamonds | A 7 5 | ||
| ♣ Clubs | 9 3 2 | ♣ Clubs | Q J 6 5 | ||
|
South |
|||||
| ♠ Spades | K Q J 8 | ||||
| ♥ Hearts | Q J 3 2 | ||||
| ♦ Diamonds | J 6 2 | ||||
| ♣ Clubs | K 8 | ||||
With 17 points North will open 1 Heart (having 5 Hearts). East has nothing to say and will pass. South now has to think carefully. They have 13 points with very good Heart support, and this is a case where it is important to tell partner how strong you are, so bid 3 Hearts. This tells partner that you have a hand on which you could have opened.
West also passes, and now North has to think carefully. With their 17 points and partner showing at least 12, they have a minimum of 29 and so must go to game - 4 Hearts. The question is though, should they think of going higher?
One thing they could do would be to bid 4 Clubs next, asking for Aces. If South has two Aces, then North could almost certainly bid a slam, but in the actual bidding, South responds 4 Diamonds to the 4 Clubs bid, showing that they have no Aces. North now knows that he and partner are missing the Ace of Diamonds, and that it will be too risky to go to slam, so they bid 4 Hearts which becomes the final contract.
When you become a little more experienced with your bidding, you might find that North could have done a little more to find out whether a slam was on, but we will wait a little before pursuing those thoughts.
TIP NO. 3 -
OPENING LEAD
Taking the above hand as our example, what does East lead against the
contract of 4 Hearts?
While I do not recommend that you always lead out your top card(s), in
this case East does not have a great hand, or the prospect of setting
anything up to make extra tricks except in Clubs. It probably will
therefore be best to lead the Ace of Diamonds, and see what follows. The
one thing that this does do is to give East the opportunity to look at
Dummy before they make their next play.
This can be extremely useful. In this particular case, East can see
straightaway that Dummy's highest Diamond is the Jack, and it is
therefore possible that West may have a high Diamond, so they decide to
lead a small Diamond to see what happens.
East might have thought about leading a Club, but this would be somewhat
dangerous if North has the Ace, and as in the light of the bidding this
is highly possible, it is better to be a little cautious, and stay with
the Diamond, for now at least.
Well, that's it for this week. Good bridging!
David
David Clement
PUZZLE ANSWERYou bid 2 Clubs.
It really is a very straightforward case, even though you may not see such a hand very often during your bridge career. You have 27 points, and any hand with 23 points or more requires you to open 2 Clubs.
You will observe that you have nine certain tricks, but have you really? If you opened 3 No Trumps and that was the final contract, the opposition would almost certainly lead a Club, and it would only require one of them to have five clubs in their hand for you to lose five tricks in Clubs, and, hey presto, your safe nine tricks would have disappeared.