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” and 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 and quite often with a lot of discomfort and hesitating
that is apparent to the whole table. Expert defenders would see this coming at
trick one and plan their discards smoothly and 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 and make discards that give the show away. Sometimes they feel
they are squeezed when they are not and 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♥ and 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♥ and 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 and that is to run all his trumps and pitch
his spade on the long heart and try 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 & then continues to discard black cards. Steve does not
discard any diamonds. How many diamonds do you think Sue has for discarding one
and then
stopping ?
Patterns can help again . If Sue had 5 diamonds the pattern is 5-4-3-1 and
Steve had a stiff diamond which he might have led. OK lets 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 and 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 and
anti-percentage. You now lead the diamond jack and Sue covers with the queen
and on the next diamond the 10 comes tumbling down and you chalk up +980
turning a zero into a top. We refer to these slams as getting “Ray Graced” .