Wednesday, February
09, 2005 5:48 AM
Hand Evaluation – Signaling ( Story
Telling )
PITBULLS:
Most
defenders are not very skillful in the art of
defense. Therefore,
their discards
“tell you a story” that assists you in making a great many hands that otherwise would go down. In most cases , the defenders are “too honest” so give accurate
count & attitude signals for you. The information is intended for their
partners but you are allowed to intercept
their signals. In addition , these
defenders do not “think ahead” . If they have Qxx in front of AKJ on the board they wait until the last
minute to plan their discards . This is quite apparent
often with a lot of discomfort & hesitating that is obvious to the whole
table. Expert defenders would see this coming at trick one , plan their discards smoothly & without any
apparent pain.
When
you are running a suit , it’s a good bet the opponents first discard is
from a 5
card suit. This causes the
least amount of discomfort for them & then they decide what their
discarding plan might be. Sometimes one partner is oblivious to what is going
on that you are trying to find a queen sod make discards that give the show
away. Sometimes they feel they are squeezed when they are not
, but in some cases they actually are squeezed. If you can afford
to run a suit before finding a key queen , its really to your advantage to do so . Even
experts slip up on occasion.
Here
is a hand which should have been made
by a Tormentee if he “read” the opponents discards properly.
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J |
J |
A |
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x |
10 |
9 |
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x |
9 |
x |
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8 |
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x |
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1st
the bidding . The tormentee
opened 1♥ & I pre-empted 4♥. Just for the
record, no partner of mine has ever made a slam opposite one of my jump to game
pre-empts, but
undaunted partner bid 4NT. I had an Ace so I showed it. We reached 6♥ so Steve Willard led
a club with the Ace winning on the board.
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Q |
A |
A |
K |
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x |
K |
K |
x |
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Q |
8 |
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x |
7 |
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x |
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The Tormentee
has only one line of play & that is to run all his trumps
, pitch his spade on the long heart & try to steal the contract. He start running
trump & Sue on his right signals a high spade. As the hearts keep coming , Sue eventually lets one diamond go & then continues
to discard black cards. Steve does not discard any diamonds. How many diamonds
do you think Sue has for discarding one & then stopping ? Patterns can help again . If Sue had 5 diamonds , the
pattern is 5-4-3-1 so Steve had a stiff diamond which he might have led. OK let’s
give her 4 diamonds . Did she have Q10xx and decide to let a diamond go ? Not
likely as might have kept all her diamonds with that holding. Sue was indeed
down to Qxx & Steve had his original 10x of diamonds. The opponents are
never going to discard down to a doubleton queen for you so banging down the AK
of diamonds is futile & anti-percentage. You now lead the diamond jack , Sue covers with the queen so on the next diamond ,
the 10 comes tumbling down . You chalk up +980 turning a zero into a top. We
refer to these slams as getting “Ray Graced” .