Thursday, September 07, 2006 1:00 AM

Reading the Green

PITBULLS:

A golfer reads the green. He notices the contours , the way the grass is growing , whether the green slopes towards the ocean. He notices ball marks , spike marks , & loose impediments. He “reads” the green to help him make his putt and take money from his buddies’ pockets.

The dummy is the “green” in the game of Bridge. You plan your defense by reading the green. Kantar divides the dummy into 3 categories. He calls it “LSD” since he was from the 60’s. A “dead” dummy where it is flat and no source of tricks or limited entries. He has an “L” category dummies where a suit ( Length ) can be established as a source of tricks. This is where you should cash or attack entries need to get to the suit or establish the suit. The last S category stands for singleton where a source of tricks will come from ruffing. With these types of dummys a trump switch is in order.

The auction goes 1NT all pass and you lead the passive club 10 from ♠Axx ♥Qxx ♦10xx ♣1098x. The board hits with ♠Qxx ♥Jxx ♦xxx ♣Qxxx and declarer wins the King. Declarer leads a spade towards the queen and a spade back with partner showing three of them. Reading the green , you notice this a dead dummy as Kantar calls them. Only 5 HCP and declarer has used up maybe his only dummy entry. This dummy screams for passive defense as breaking suits and guessing will just give declarer entries and help his cause. Let him play this hand as you have only 6 HCP and 5 HCP on the board is a total of 11 HCP. Partner is marked with 13-14 HCP all located in front of declarer. Let declarer come to your partners HCP’s instead of you leading thru partners HCP’s. You win the spade and passively return a spade. Declarer goes one down instead of making 3 when you start guessing and attacking suits.

The dummy is not the sole possession of declarer. You build hand patterns from the dummy and you plan your defense by “reading the green”. You can count dummy HCP’s to plan your defense. Use information given to you to guide your defense and that includes information obtained from reading the dummy.