Friday, November 11, 2005 2:28 AM

Pieces Of the Puzzle

PITBULLS:

The dummy is your friend in the game of Bridge either as defender or declarer. You do not need to be formal as in Dora meet dummy or dummy meet Dora but take the time to get acquainted ! On defense , build partial patterns using your hand and the dummy. What do I mean by partial patterns ? Build the first two steps in your pattern by acknowledging how many cards are in key suits taking your hand and the dummy into consideration. You have 5 spades and there are 4 on the board. Mentally say 5-4 and your pattern is well on the way to being built. Partner is the missing link. She gives you count quite often so the pattern can become complete. Declarer leads a spade and partner plays the 9 showing standard count. Houston , we have lift off ! The pattern is now complete 5-4-2-2 . The goal of this game is to know declarer’s hand. We now know that declarer has two spades. This is valuable information.

What about the other side of the dummy ? The dummy and opening lead allows you to build a complete pattern not a partial one . Partner leads the diamond 9 and there are 4 diamonds on the board and you have 4 of them. How many does declarer have ? Simple fill in the blanks with your memorized patterns. 4-4-3-2 so declarer has 3 diamonds. Again valuable information. Sometimes these are tentative distributions because if partner led a singleton diamond 9 or 9 from 987 you are out one. So what . A partial plan or pattern is better then none at all.

Declarer plays a suit and partner shows out. This is a superb discovery play . Apply a pattern immediately. Partner leads a suit and declarer ruffs. You apply a pattern and it turns out partner has a 7 card suit. This is valuable information also ! This means there are only 6 cards left in partners hand and that gives you clues to declarers distribution. This information guides you on your defense. Whether to switch to a trump , tap the declarer , what card to discard i.e. defending properly. Otherwise it is just random guessing and you invariably hand declarer her contract..

The 4^th and last way to build a picture of declarers hand is discarding. Signaling is “depending on context” . Signaling by discarding is attitude most of the time. However when declarer is attempting a squeeze quite often you switch to count instead for you discards. Declarer is running clubs in 6NT and is attempting a pseudo squeeze. Show count when you discard. Partner discards the diamond deuce showing 3 playing standard count. There are 4 on the board & you have 5 . You say to yourself 5-4-3-1 so declarer only has one of them so you discard accordingly.

Declarer play uses patterns to visualize the hands for advanced plays like squeezes & endplays or just finding queens. Tom Gandolfo & BJ Trelford have been known to play hands “double dummy”. What does that term mean ? I remember a hand that Tom played in Calgary againt the Dann’s. He was in 4♥ with a horrific trump break and Dan Bertrand had bid 3♣ on the auction. Dann Krammer led the club king and I put down AJx of clubs and Kx of spades. Tom won the Ace and stripped the red suits coming down to a 4 card end position. Tom had used the information given to him that RHO had a 7 card club suit. He led a small spade towards the spade King and ducked. Bertrand was down to Qx of clubs & AQ frozen of spades. He won his spades and was end played to the club jack on the board for +620 just as Tom planned.

I watched BJ make a trump coup where he got a horrible trump break so he had to assume a theoretical pattern for the coup to be successful and play for it. He ruffed himself down to their length in the trump suit and end played them to get an additional entry to the board. Coming off the board the defender was defenseless. He ruffed and BJ over ruffed and the game made. BJ could not make this hand without thinking and applying hypothetical patterns. When the hypothetical turned out to be the real distribution the hand made !

Have I ever mentioned the importance of patterns in the game of Bridge before ??