Sunday, December 04, 2005 8:46 AM

Defense

PITBULLS:

One of the most difficult aspects of Bridge is defense. In my opinion , it is the most fascinating though. Like a golfer playing a difficult golf course , you are called upon to use all the clubs in your bag. The clubs in your bag for expert defense are Bidding skills , applying patterns & playing detective by analyzing clues. The clues are usually how declarer is playing the hand or how your expert partner is defending the hand or what partner has decided to lead. Your expert partner has a reason for how she is defending a hand.

The opponents are in 2♥ vul and the board is ♥ AKJ ♠ AKJx ♦ Kx ♣ J109x and you lead the diamond queen from Qxxx Qxx QJ10x KQ . Declarer plays the diamond King and returns the diamond 9 which you duck. Partner continues diamonds and declarer ruffs on the board. Declarer plays the spade Ace & King and discards a club on the spade. You note the spade pattern is 4-4-4-1 for future reference. She now leads another spade and ruffs it and then ruffs her last diamond on the board. She now leads a club and partner plays small and you win your club honour. You return a trump and the stiff heart Ace wins on the board. Declarer leads a club and partner wins her Ace and returns the heart 9 covered by the 10 and you win your queen. Now what ? You know your expert partner has another spade but did not tap declarer by leading it . Instead she chose to return the trump. This is easy as you just follow partners defense. You return a heart and partners heart eight draws the last trump and you cash the last spade for +200 vul. Partner did not tap declarer so obviously you should not.

Patterns of course are the main tool in the bag. A superb side effect of applying patterns on defense is it gives you an automatic count of declarers tricks ! BJ Trelford surprised everyone by leading a club in 3NTX against Susan & Kiz . The board hit with AQJ9xx Axx xx Q10 and Susan held xx Kxxx KJ8 Axxx. BJ had overcalled 2♦ on the auction and I doubled. Given the overcall , Susan tried the club queen but to no avail as I played the King. Susan ducked so I switched to the diamond 10 covered by the jack and BJ wins his queen. BJ has 5 clubs with all the spots so he leads the club jack to establish his clubs. Susan wins the club Ace and leads a spade. Disaster as BJ shows out discarding a diamond so Susan goes up with spade Ace. Susan now makes an avoidance play by ducking a heart into BJ’s hand hoping they are 3-3. BJ wins the heart jack and starts running his clubs. I try to help out with the count of the hand by discarding my remaining two hearts on BJ’s clubs. With my heart discards , BJ now knows the heart pattern 4-3-3-3 so he can count Susan’s tricks. 3 hearts , 1 spade , 1 club so he just returns a heart and lets her cash the remaining hearts. She is now end played away from her K8 of diamonds for 4 down doubled 800 nv . Applying a pattern gave you a count of her tricks so there was no need to panic and cash your diamond Ace as it is not going anywhere.