Bridge

Opening lead: ♣ J On our featured deal, whilst no more than 8 tricks are possible in notrumps, you can win no fewer than 11 tricks in Spades – provided you handle trumps correctly (analogous to example (b) above). The key is to prevent a third round of trumps being played. Win the ♣ J (with say the ♣ K) and duck a trump altogether (key play). Say West wins the ♠ 10 and continues with the ♣ 10. Win with the ♣ A and lead to the ♠A. Leaving their master trump out (the Rule of One), cash the ♥AK, the uAK and ruff the u 6. It does West no good to ruff, nor to throw the master ♣ 9, so he throws the ♥J. You now ruff the ♣ 4 - your eleventh trick. 4♠ made + 1.

There is an exception, however. When you have set up a suit in the dummy, you should often force the defender to take the boss trump while you still have an entry to dummy, so you can enjoy dummy’s running suit. Example:

Dummy ♠ K 3 2 u A K Q J 10

Declarer ♠ A 8 7 6 5 u 4 3 2

Spades are trumps. A defender may ruff the third round of Diamonds with her master trump and cut you off from dummy’s two winning Diamonds – so it may be better to give the defender her master trump.

Further examples can be found on Andrew Robson’s excellent website: www.andrewrobson.co.uk and I would highly recommend his daily BridgeCasts.

The Cardturner

An elderly life-long bridge player becomes blind and enlists his teenage grand-nephew to sit at his table in the bridge club and call out the cards for him. By such exposure does the teenager become intrigued by the game of bridge and end up an avid student. Books with a bridge theme The Cardturner may well inspire young people to take an interest in bridge – much needed, since the average age of bridge players is increasing every year and stands at 71 in the United States. The best-selling author, Louis Sachar, explains the rudiments of bridge very well. For example, Finesse: “A Finesse is a cool play that allows you to win two tricks with the ace and queen of a suit, even though one of your opponents holds the king. It has a 50 per cent chance of success, depending upon which one of your opponents holds the king. By the way, when I first showed this to Leslie, I used real cards not a bridge diagram. If you find it difficult to follow the diagrams, try using a real deck”. Other bridge concepts and techniques are explained clearly, making this book beneficial to absolute beginners and improvers alike. In an interview the author said: “Few young people have ever heard of bridge, and for those who have, they probably think of it as something old and fuddy-duddy. I hoped to present it as something new and exciting. It is full of limitless possibilities. But probably the best part of bridge, unlike chess, is that it is a partnership game”. As a novel, it is, as they say, a page turner, more than holding the reader’s attention – the plot having many twists and turns. As it is both entertaining and educational, I would highly recommend it.

The Cardturner Available for €7.07, including delivery from www.bookdepository.com. The Bridge Ladies The author, Betsy Lerner, becomes a regular attendee at her mother’s Monday afternoon bridge club, strengthening her connection with her mother, building friendships with the other An elderly life-long bridge player becomes blind and enlists his teenage grand-nephew to sit at his table in the bridge club and call out the cardshim. By such exposure does the teenager become intrigued by the game of bridge and end up an avid student. This book may well inspire young people to take an interest in bridge – much needed, since the average age of bridge players is increasing every year and stands at 71 in the United States. The best-selling author, Louis Sachar, explains the rudiments of bridge very well. For example, Finesse: “A Finesse is a cool play that allows you to win two tricks with the ace and queen of a suit, even though one of your opponents holds the king. It has a 50 per cent chance of success, depending upon which one of your opponents holds the king. By the way, when I first showed this to Leslie, I used real cards not a bridge diagram. If you find it difficult to follow the diagrams, try using a real deck”. Other bridge concepts and techniques are explained clearly, making this book beneficial to absolute beginners and improvers alike. In an interview the author said: “Few young people have ever heard of bridge, and for those who have, they probably think of it as something old and fuddy-duddy. I hoped to present it as something new and exciting. It is full of limitless possibilities. But probably the best part of bridge, unlike chess, is that it is a partnership game”. As a novel, it is, as they say, a page turner, more than holding the reader’s attention – the plot having many twists and turns. As it is both entertaining and educational, I would highly recommend it. Available for €7.07, including delivery from www.bookdepository.com. octogenarian “Bridge Ladies” — and falling in love with the game of bridge. Lerner says: “I think most people need some motivation to learn bridge. Usually friends or spouses play and they don’t want to miss out. Unlike most card games, you probably should take lessons and you need to play a lot. I’m terrible at maths, logic and have memory issues, but I love the game. People who are “naturals’ have an abundance of these skills. The rest of us plod along”. Speaking of her mother’s generation: “Their generation is called “The Silent Generation.” They didn’t have a culture of therapy, confession, Oprah, openness. Children were supposed to be seen and not heard, you were meant to suffer in silence and pull yourself up by your bootstraps”. The author goes on to state: “I think bridge attracts people with new found time on their hands: divorce, unemployment, widowhood, empty nest, all kinds of life transitions might be responsible for some people taking the plunge”. And now we can add Covid to that list. This book is instructive in the area of bridge, a valuable piece of social history and an honest exploration of the mother/daughter relationship. Highly recommended.

Andrew Robson

Free bridge emails: If you wish to receive free bridge emails which include lessons, videos & The Bridge Ladies Available for €7.51, including delivery from www.bookdepository.com. The author, Betsy Lerner, becomes a regular attendee at her mother’s Monday afternoon bridge club, strengthening her connection with her mother, building friendships with the other octogenarian “Bridge Ladies” — quizzes please email me: michaelolough@yahoo.com

Bridge Getting started: for absolute beginners

Bridge is a partnership game involving four players: two against two. The four players sit at a square table, each player facing her partner. The points of the compass are used to designate the four players: North, South, East and West. Decide which partnership is going to be North/South and which partnership is going to be East/ West. This can be done by agreement between the four players or by drawing cards. In a Bridge club, North/South get to sit at the same table for the duration of the session whereas East/West, after playing 2 or 3 hands move to a different table and play against different opponents. After each hand has been played it is North’s job to calculate and write in the score on the score sheet. She shows the score to East/ West in order to get their agreement.

Sometimes it is necessary for the cards to be shuffled and dealt at the beginning of the session. On other occasions the cards have been pre-dealt. The Tournament Director will announce whichever is the case. Each player takes her cards from the correct pocket of the wallet/board. The wallet/board will say which player is the Dealer. The Dealer makes the first bid in the Auction.

Bridge is truly a game of two halves. First you have the Auction also called the Bidding. The Auction determines how many tricks out of the thirteen available, your side is committed to making, i.e., your Contract. That is why the full title for the game is: Contract Bridge. The Auction also determines whether or not there will be a Trump Suit: A Trump Suit is a Master Suit which takes precedence over the other three non-trump suits. Only after the Auction has been completed, does the second half, the Play, commence.

Before the Auction commences, each player evaluates the strength of her hand by giving a value of 4 to each Ace, a value of 3 to each King, a value of 2 to each Queen and a value of 1 to each Jack. Ten points is the average number of points that each bridge hand contains. To make the first bid in the auction you need slightly more than the average because by making a bid you are committing your side to winning the majority of the tricks. When you bid you are committing your side to winning at least 7 out of the 13 tricks available. To make the first bid in the auction a minimum of 12 points is required. If the Dealer has less than 12 points she says “Pass” and the player on her left gets a chance to bid. The bidding, like the play of the cards, goes in a clockwise direction. After a positive bid is followed by three Passes the auction is over. everybody at the table knows the meaning of the code. To start the auction off with a bid of 1 No Trump, your hand must fulfil two requirements:

1. You must have 12 – 14 High Card Points (abbreviated to HCPs): these are points you give yourself for any high cards you have in your hand: 4 for each Ace; 3 for each King; 2 for each Queen and 1 for each Jack.

2. You must have what’s called a Balanced Hand.

A Balanced Hand has a bit of everything, at least two cards in every suit. More precisely a Balanced Hand has one of the following distributions (your distribution is the number of cards you have in each suit): 4-3-3-3; 4-4-3-2 or 5-3-3-2. Another way of looking at it is: a Balanced Hand has no void (a void is a suit in which you have no cards); a Balanced Hand has no singletons (a singleton is a suit in which you have one card); a Balanced Hand has at most one doubleton (a doubleton is a suit in which you have two cards). Here are examples of hands on which you would open the bidding with a bid of 1 No Trump (opening the bidding means making the first positive bid in the auction – “Pass” is not a positive bid because “Pass” is negative and means “No Bid”): ♠K76 ♥A97 uQ652 ♣A98; ♠J76 ♥KQ87 uA652 ♣A9; ♠Q76 ♥K97 uK6 ♣A9875

To repeat: THE ONE NO TRUMP OPENING BID

Holding 12-14 points and a balanced hand the correct OPENING BID is 1NT.

A Balanced Hand: does not have a VOID does not have a SINGLETON does not have TWO OR MORE DOUBLETONS Open 1NT with each of these hands: ♠QJ7 ♥ K975 u A52 ♣ K86; ♠76 ♥ KQ87 u J52 ♣ AKJ9; ♠764 ♥ K9 u AQ963 ♣ K75

Here are some hands not suitable for a 1NT opening: ♠QJ76 ♥ K975 u 5 ♣ AK85 (contains a singleton); ♠76 ♥ Q8 u KJ532 ♣ AQJ9 (contains two doubletons); ♠K64 ♥ AJ9 u A963 ♣ K75 (contains 15 points); ♠9764 ♥--- uAK963 ♣ AQ75 (contains a void).

When you bid, you always mentally add 6 to your bid to work out the number of tricks you need to win. For example, when you bid 1 No Trump you are committing your side to winning 1 + 6 tricks, without a trump suit - which means that each suit is of equal value when it comes to the play of the cards: for example, if a diamond is led, then whoever plays the highest diamond wins that trick. When you bid 1 No Trump you will either make 7 or more tricks and get a score awarded to your side or you will fail to achieve your target of 7 tricks and in that case your opponents will have a certain score awarded to them; when you bid 2 No Trump you are committing your side to winning 2 + 6 tricks without a trump suit: you will either make 8 or more tricks and get a score awarded to your side or you will fail to achieve your target of 8 tricks and in that case your opponents will have a certain score awarded to them; when you bid 3 No Trump you are committing your side to winning 3 + 6 tricks without a trump suit: you will either make 9 or more tricks and get a score awarded to your side or you will fail to achieve your target of 9 tricks and in that case your opponents will have a certain score awarded to them; and so on. More in the next issue. Absolute Beginners Classes: If you have never played Bridge before or if you know of anyone who wishes to take up Bridge, I would recommend the Absolute Beginners online classes given by Bridge Grand Master Thomas MacCormac: thomas@grandmasterbridge.com