Sunday,
August 20, 2006 9:55 PM
Single handed Defense
PITBULLS:
I
have been fortunate that over the years that I have played with good partners.
Mike Chomyn , Vish , Subash , Bryan Maksymetz , Peter Jones & Tom Gandolfo
to name a few. Playing with good partners means you are not required to defend
“single handedly” . They know how to count hands , count HCP’s , count
declarers tricks & know how to signal depending on the context of the
situation. Their discards quite often map out the defense for you and lead you
subtle inferences. They are also good at suit preference tricks & Smith
echos.
I
played with Subash in a regional in Edmonton 3 years ago and every hand we were
on defense was like we were playing double dummy. We were about to win the Open
Pairs when Subash made the fatal mistake of buying me my 3rd beer.
This caused me to endplay myself on the last board & we lost by 4
matchpoints. However, saying that
our defense was responsible for most of our matchpoints was an understatement.
If
you are a good player who has had a history
of playing with weaker partners ,
you have quite an adjustment to make when you are playing with an expert
defender. You have been programmed to ignore partners defense , discards ,
leads and signals because partner has no idea what is going with the hand. As
Kelsey says , “most defenders operate in a fog of uncertainty” so its best to
ignore what they are doing. To protect yourself , its you vrs declarer
and damn the consequences. You have almost trained yourself not to draw
inferences from what partner is doing because partner has lead you
down the wrong path so often in the past.
Now
you are playing with an expert partner. He notices that you not paying
attention to his discards , signals or following his suggested defense. It is a
hard habit to break as you have
always just trusted yourself over the years on defense. It is something that
you have to work on and comes with the territory for an expert partnership to
be successful.