Wednesday, February 09, 2005 5:48 AM
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” . When they
have Qxx in front of AKJ on the board they wait until
the last minute to plan their discards . Quite often
this is done with a lot of discomfort and hesitating that is apparent to the
whole table. Expert defenders would see this coming at trick one so 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 & they
next 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 so make
discards which give the show away. Sometimes they feel they are squeezed when
they are not but in some cases they actually are squeezed. When 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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A |
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10 |
9 |
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9 |
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8 |
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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♥ , Steve Willard
led a club with the Ace winning on the board.
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Q |
A |
A |
K |
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K |
K |
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Q |
8 |
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x |
7 |
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The
tormentee has only one line of play. Run all his trumps
and pitch his spade on the long heart trying to steal the contract. He does
this and Sue on his right signals a high spade. As the hearts keep coming , Sue eventually lets one diamond go & continues to discard black cards. Steve does
not discard any more diamonds. How many diamonds do you think Sue has for
discarding one and
stopping ? Patterns can help again .
When Sue had 5 diamonds , the pattern is 5-4-3-1
. 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 with Steve holding 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 and anti-percentage. You now lead the
diamond jack .
Sue covers with the queen so on the next diamond the 10 comes tumbling
down. You now chalk up +980 turning a zero into a top. We refer to these slams
as getting “Ray Graced” . The opponents
discards tell a story. It is your job to read that story ☺