Tuesday, March 06, 2007 4:36 AM

Hand Evaluation – Tactics ( psyches )

PITBULLS:

A psychic bid is defined as a bid that grossly overstates your values or your distribution. The bid is meant to disrupt & bluff the opponents out of their rightful contract. In general , bluffing should be left to poker players as poker is not a partnership game. Psyches in a partnership game can bluff partner so you are committing Bridge suicide.

There are times though to make such tactical bids . Usually you are nv & partner is a passed hand. These two ingredients are necessary to not hurt the partnership discipline too badly. Another time for a tactical bid is when you have a huge fit for partner so you are trying to buy the contract. When you are vul with a big fit , the nv opponents generally will not let you play it in your contract.

One tactic to prevent the opponents from sacrificing or bidding over your vul game is to bid their suit before they do. Recently my partner opened 1♥ vul where the nv opponent made a T/O double. You hold ♠xxx ♥KQxxxxx ♦x ♣xx so the chances of you playing this hand in 4♥ is virtually nil. Since a 4♥ bid was out of the question , I decided to psyche one of their suits. I bid 2♣ which partner duly alerted as a transfer to diamonds. This was doubled with partner obediently bidding 2♦. I now leapt to 4♥ in a vain effort to play it there. No such luck as LHO now bid 4NT resulting in RHO bidding 5♣. One last effort by me to buy the hand so I bid 5♥ . As expected , the nv LHO “took out insurance” and bid 6♣ which partner doubled.

I am on lead so I led my singleton diamond. The dummy hit with ♠xx ♥void ♦AJ1098x ♣KQJ10x & declarer played low as did partner & the diamond king won. Declarer now led a club won my partners Ace. She holds ♠QJ10x ♥AJ10x ♦xx ♣Axx , she now tries to make sense of the bidding. Partner bid up to the 5 level vul vrs not & 11 HCP hit the table opposite a T/O double. Applying patterns & HCP’s are the two basics of Bridge defense . Let’s take HCP’s first . LHO is short in hearts with his T/O double & a heart void appears on dummy. This places partner with KQ many times in hearts. I have 12 HCP , the board’s 11 HCP , partner 5 HCP in hearts so that totals 28 HCP. The T/O doubler must hold the rest of the HCP’s !! Now take the diamond pattern. Does the T/O doubler have a stiff ♦King & also be short in hearts for the T/O double ? This means that partners diamond bid ( 6-4-2-1) was bid on 4 to the queen. This is an odd bid after bidding hearts up to the 5 level vulnerable.

You now decide declarer has KQxx of diamonds with the pattern being 6-4-2-1. Partner has bid for a lead in case they play 6♣ from the other side. You lead a diamond , get in with a club and continue diamonds for a ruff. You return a diamond so partner ruffs again. Your partner’s are in their ice cold +920 in diamonds at the other table, so you win 14 IMPS.