Thursday, February 09, 2006 1:01 AM

Hand Evaluation – Signals ( Radio Frequencies )

PITBULLS:

In the game of Bridge sometimes you must be like a tuning capacitor. What is that exactly ? In a radio or TV that is the component that tunes into the frequency of the radio wave that you want to hear or see. In the game of Bridge , there are many inferences floating around but you must “tune into them” . Allow partner to help you with signaling but you can tune into other inferences also on your own.

Playing with a tormentee tonight the auction went 3♦-4♦-X-4♥

P-P-5♦-X

all pass . You lead the heart Ace , the board is ♠Qx ♥K9 ♦Q1098x ♣AJ10x . This is the time for the Gartaganis signaling method. The King of hearts dictates that we switch to middle encourages with high and lo hearts are suit preferences. Partner plays the heart 6 & declarer the jack & you have ♠KJ10xxx ♥AQ87xx ♦void ♣Q . Now what ?

We start off our defense the usual way with patterns. Whenever they pre-empt or make a bid that announces distribution , this translation to patterns always must be your first step. OK they have announced a 7 card diamond suit , there are 5 on the board so you have 12 diamonds accounted for as partner only has one. Partner’s heart 6 is a bit fuzzy but he did not play the deuce that is missing or the 5 that is missing. Therefore, he can not like clubs.

Knowing that partner has a stiff diamond this could mean that the pre-empter has ♦AKJxxxx of diamonds. Counting HCP’s is the 2^nd defensive step in Bridge after patterns . The pre-empter can not hold the spade Ace also as she does not have a pre-empt with that card. Furthermore , partner has nothing on which to double 5♦ ( bidding the 3^rd defensive inference) . If partner did not hold the spade Ace , he would make sure that you switch to a club by playing the lowest heart. The heart 6 turned out to be his highest heart from 652.

However . signaling is not the end all & be all . You take the signal along with all the other clues that you can tune into. Partner doubled the final contract , so she must hold some values. The opponents pre-empted so they have a defined framework from which you can draw inferences. All indications broadcast that partner has the spade Ace , so you switch to a spade. You get rewarded as you cash the spade Ace & King & partners stiff diamond happens to be the Ace so you are plus +300 for a good result. -550 was not a good result when the tormentee switched to a club L.