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 , it is 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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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♥ 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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K |
K |
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Q |
8 |
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7 |
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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 & 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” .