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Deal of the Week
by Mitch Snyder
A Counting Story
As you know, rabbits love to multiply but they can also perform the more mundane task of counting. In today’s hand, from a recent BBO robot game, my friend Bugs is going to demonstrate how some simple counting can lead to a top result.
Counting may be mundane but it should be an integral part of your bridge game. Sometimes you need to count a suit and sometimes high card points (HCPs). Neither are particularly large numbers. You can make the task even easier by reducing the number of cards or points to be counted by excluding what you see in your hand and the dummy.
For example, if you are declaring and hold 18 HCPs and the dummy has 10, then you only need to count the 12 HCPs held by your opponents. Counting trump is probably the one thing you should always do, but don’t count to 13. If you are declaring in an eight card fit, just count the 5 cards held by your opponents.
Not every hand requires counting all the suits or even all the HCPs, but when the right opportunity arrives, seize it!
Click hare to see Bugs in action
First a word about the bidding. Bugs’ 1S overcall on a 4 card suit is somewhat unusual, but he felt it had two positive effects. It directed the lead should west become declarer and preempted a 1H call that west may have wanted to make.
West would, in fact, have bid a heart but he had to make a negative double instead. Although he was a shade light he didn’t want to miss a potential heart fit.
North’s bid, a jump into an opponent’s suit, is called a mixed raise. It shows a hand with 4 or more cards in partner’s suit and 7-9 dummy points.
The auction ended in 3S.
Bugs could count a combined 21 HCP in his hand and the dummy and giving east 12-13 for his opening bid there’s only 6-7 points left for west.
After a diamond lead, EW took the first four tricks, west showing up with 6 HCPs. Since west should probably not have more than one more HCP, the Jack of spades was the only other honor card he could have.
West led a heart at trick 5 and east ruffed. Bugs won the club switch in dummy.
It was likely that east held both the Q & J of spades so with AKT of trump in his hand Bugs planned on taking the double finesse. If West held the Jack, too bad, this was his line.
He led a spade and surprisingly east put up the Jack, problem solved. West couldn’t have the queen unless east opened an 11 count on what seemed to be a balanced deal. Bugs ruffed a diamond back to dummy, repeated the finesse and claimed.
An interesting side note: We all know it is proper for defenders to play low from touching honors, but in this case a Queen false card might have given Bugs pause for thought.
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