Dubious Logic

Teaching Card-Play

Teaching bridge is not easy. Well actually, I don't think teaching anything is easy. That seems to be evidenced by the fact that the best practitioners seldom make the best teachers. But in bridge there is a shift between bidding and play for the teacher and the pupil. Bidding seems to be about amassing a set of rules. Judgement eventually comes about from weighing up which rules are important in a given situation. Play however, what's that about?

After the very simple axioms of trick taking are established, the mechanics of the play are more or less left up to the individual. We tend to forget how much memory work is involved. Those new to the game wilt under weight of keeping track of those cards gone and those still extant. Recreating hands - counting the hand - is a technique that is unjustly thought to be the domain of the expert. As with the memory strain, it is something that comes with time yet is hard to teach. Take this simple hand as an example,

You declare one no-trump from the West side. The defence starts with a top club and switches to low spade to your nine. You play a diamond to the king which holds and exit with a club. South wins and plays the king of hearts which you capture to play another diamonds. North takes his ace and cashes clubs. South who started with queen and another, discards two spades. A heart is next, you rise with the knave but South wins and plays another. We're down to three cards and you need the rest,

You can play for diamonds originally 3-3 or to drop the knave of spades, which is it to be? There seems to be two ways out of this. Reconstruct the original hands or analyse the ending of three cards. South has discarded two spades and has four clubs and at least three hearts, diamonds are no worse than 4-2. If he has four diamonds and two clubs he has at most four spades of which he has discarded two already – playing spades is fine. Alternatively, if diamonds are 3-3 then the most spades he could have started with was five (5-3-3-2) and again, having pitched two, playing on spades is sufficient.

The other way of looking at it is, as there is one heart, two diamonds and three spades outstanding, the player looking at the last heart has either ---, one or two diamonds. If two there is nothing we can do (spades are 3-0 now), if one then our play doesn't matter and if --- then it is right to play spades (they are 2-1).

So you can get to the right answer from either direction, reconstruct or envisage. Which should you do? In truth both. Envisaging the actual cards an opponent is looking at is quicker and may help you to see the play required but recreating gathers more information and when there is no clear course, helps you to weigh the likelihood factors. But you're learning the game, what then? Try to get into the habit of imagining the hands dealt, the hand patterns, 4-4-3-2, 6-3-3-1 etc. will soon become familiar and with more than three or four cards, it is much easier than the unfamiliar combinations that add to five, six seven and so on.

Published Saturday 3.Feb.2001