[babalu1997]

circa 1961


There comes a time in almost every bridge game when the hostess brings out the coffee and cake. that's when the postmortems fly thick and fast, when praise an reproach are dealt out.

How do you handle the postmortem? Has anybody given you advice on this vital part of the game? Most of the textbooks carry you through bidding and play, but they leave you to your own devices just when you are most in need of expert advice.

Be Friendly

Always begin the postmortem with a friendly word of praise for your partner. "you played very well tonight," may seem an uninspired beginning, but it is still much favored by experts.

"I've never seen you play so well," is much better, of course, particularly if your partner has actually played like a catfish with blind staggers. With this one sentence, you soothe your partner and make it clear to the opponents that your evening has been one long struggle.

Accuracy Pays

No matter how skillful you are, your partner will sometimes get the first word in. "Where on earth did you find that last bid?" she may ask.

Now you must move quickly. your partner doesn't expect an answer to this type of question; in fact, she is just leading up to her opinion of that bid an perhaps a few others. Let her get well started, and the postmortem is lost.

Tell her just where you found the bid in question. Don't say you found it in a book. Name the book and give a page number. Incidentally, stay away from round numbers. There may actually be something veyr important on page 200 of a book, but page 187 sounds more convincing. Accuracy of this kind is veyr important.


Staging a Diversion

If your partner happens to be your spouse, you may have trouble with this page 187 routine. It wears a bit thin after the tenth time you have used it.

Be ready to divert attention to the opponents. Congratulate one of them, for example, on using the same kind of bid very successfully earlier in the evening. Then praise his partner for sizing up the situation correctly and making the correct decision.

by this time both opponents should be on your side, and your partner will be glad to join in a discussion of how well they handled the situation.

Naturally, you mustn't let your spouse see this column, I've already hidden it from mine.

[ggwhiz]

As an up and comer I used to play the Sectional Sunday Swiss and retire with a crowd to the Quebec side where the bars didn't close until 3 and where the great Bamboozler held court.

Bits of paper flew around as everyone bid someone elses hands, usually slams for the first couple of hours. Early on I submitted mine and just before bidding 6♦, the great one announced "Greed at the slam level is a sin. You may well make 6nt but the risk is too great."

We played the hand in 2♦ just in, that was it's limit and that was when I decided to be a life long player.

[kenrexford]

One of the best post-mortem moves I have seen in a while.

I opened 1♦, partner bid 1♠, and I bid 2♣ with something like:

♠x ♥AKxx ♦Axxxx ♣Jxx

Partner then jumped to 3♥, intending this as a splinter. However, we had agreed that in this auction, 3♥ showed a GF hand with 5-5 majors. We eventually ended somewhere in the stratosphere, down several tricks. I think the final contract was perhaps 6NT, off the Ace-King of clubs and the spade Ace, for starters.

After the hand, partner skipped over the 3♥ issue and instead immediately questioned my decision to rebid 2♣. I noted that we had an agreement where we never rebid 1NT with a stiff and an agreement that we rebid 2♣ on this pattern.

Partner then grabbed a former world champion for a consult. Without providing any of the parameters, such as the agreement to not rebid 1NT with a stiff in spades and the agreement to rebid 2♣ with this exact pattern, the WC was asked for a rebid after the 1♠ response. The response was a 50-50 guess between 2♣ and 1NT. Partner then asked which of the two they would ultimately choose. The WC said that flipping a coin would be necessary. When told that a gun was to their head, pick a bid, the choice was 1NT.

Using this information, partner then concluded that 2♣ was the cause of the disaster and that we should change the agreement to solve the problem for future reference, deciding that I really should have violated the system anyway because of this unique situation.

When in doubt, then, take a given auction, find any other call that in theory could be questioned, and spend a lot of time discussing that call.

[Free]

One of the better ones I've heard about KJx vs ATx where declarer took the wrong decision:
(dummy first looks at all the hands)
dummy: you should've finessed the other way.
declarer: why?
dummy: because he (pointing his finger) has the Queen.