[1eyedjack]

neilkaz, on 2014-May-04, 12:28, said:

Perhaps PD was wincing since you overbid to a phantom sac when 4♠ is going down.

Yes if we are going to criticise the bidding then East is the only player to turns up blameless in my book.

Spotlight on West, for a moment, as this has not been mentioned hitherto.

I think that it would be normal for 3C by West to show a somewhat stronger hand. There are artificial methods around that allow you to compete here with a minimum hand based just on shape, but in the context of this forum I would recommend pass.

Nevertheless, 3C is the bid, and in that context I think that 5C is a clear error. The question to ask yourself is, do you have anything (shape, strength or whatever) that you have not already shown with your previous bids? I suggest that the answer to that is a resounding "no".

When you are in the pass-out seat (ie where a pass by you would end the auction) then it is (sometimes) permissible to take a decision on behalf of the partnership to re-enter the fray when you have already described your hand in full. But when partner is still in there with a shout, then to deprive him of any consultation when frankly you have already described your hand is deserving of a wince. Whether he would have made the right call after your pass we shall never know. But at least give him a chance.

[Winstonm]

spadebaby, on 2014-May-01, 19:27, said:

I seem to be having trouble with my playing of the hands.

Sometimes I do fairly well, others I wonder what happened and why things
went wrong.

I am looking for advice on where I can go to learn how to play the hands better.

specifically: When playing against a suit contract, how do you know when to keep leading a
suit?
If you lead diamonds twice, and you see that the dummy is out of diamonds and will ruff the
next trick....do you keep leading diamonds anyway?

Seems like I always make the wrong choice.

Help

Thanks in advance

What makes bridge such a difficult and fascinating game is that there is no one simple answer to your question - most of the time it is wrong to give and ruff and sluff, for example, but there are times when it is the only winning play.

For defense, I highly recommend starting with Kantar for Defense by Eddie Kantar. For declarer play, it is hard to beat Watson's play of the hand.

[inquiry]

spadebaby, on 2014-May-04, 11:27, said:

---

Learned how to do this todat!!!

Thanks for telling me to do it....

Was a lot easier than trying to type in.

Let's forget the bidding. Your opponents bidding was horrible. Your question was about play.

Normally you would try to draw a picture of your opponents hands from their bidding. Here I would fail miserably figuring out what they hold from their bidding It also helps if you provide us with at least the opening lead. We can assume north didn't lead a trump and probably not a heart. So let's assume a low spade. That would be surprising only in that north needs the ♠KQ ♦A, ♥KQ and probably some more points for his very strong auction. Be that as it may, the first thing you do Is count your certain winners and losers. Things look very grim You have a certain heart, spade, and two certain diamond losers. You have possible club loser and a likely second diamond loser.

Bridge is a funny game. You might get an ok result going down four, if the opponents could make their 4♠ contract. They would make 4♠ if your side can win no more than one club and not get a diamond trick. From the auction, that is at least possible (Thank goodness they didn't double). You went down two, I would probably go down three!!!

I would win the spade Ace and cash a top club, and then play South to hold ♣Qxx originally, so I would cross to the ♥A and run the ♣9. That would lose to the queen, I have a club to get back to dummy, so I will eventually win two major aces, the ♦K and five clubs for down three. The sad news, we get two clubs, and two major suit aces against 4♠.

Note, you may have heard the old saying "eight ever, nine never" which refers to the question of rather or not you finesse for the trump queen when missing just the Queen from amongst the honors, as on this hand. If you have "eight trumps" the idea is to take the finesse, if you have nine trumps, the idea is to play for the drop. Here, from the bidding and from analysis of the contract (compared to their 4♠), I choose to ignore that bridge rhyme. As you learn more you might make similar decisions.

Another GREAT way to learn how to play the cards is to play on line. No that will not make you instantly better, but after you play, you can go to myhands and review the boards you played. I suggest you look for contracts where you played the same denomination (suit/notrump) as the majority of the field and look to see which hands you took less tricks than the vast majority of other people. Then look at the hands to see what they did compared to what you did. Try to figure out why their line of play was different from yours. A better way, of course, is to go a bar with friends who played the same hands (this could be from face-to-face or online) and talk about how the hands were played (and bid).

[rmnka447]

5 ♣ down 2 looks to be about as good a result as you can achieve at that contract.

Let's talk about the bidding a little.

North actually made a terrible bid on the hand. His hand is nowhere near good enough for a double. East 1 ♥ bid is normal. South underbid his hand by bidding 2 ♦. Normally, with an opening hand opposite a T/O double, you would cue the opener's suit to show a strong hand. It might be that the opponents were playing new suits forcing in response to an overcall. In that case, advancer (overcaller's partner) knew that overcaller would have to bid again if you passed, so he'd always have the opportunity to bid again and show his strength later.

Normally, if you have minimum or nondescript values over a competitive bid by your RHO, you pass. If your hand were something like ♠ xx ♥ Kxx ♦ xxx ♣ AKJ109, that would be your proper call. But instead you have the ♦ K behind the ♦ bidder making it worth a little more because of where it sits positionally. You also have 6 nice ♣ -- AKJ109x. Some previous posters thought you might need a little more to bid 3 ♣. However, 3 ♣ is a bid you want to make to alert partner that your side can possibly compete further in ♣, if need be. So, I think 3 ♣ is reasonable with your hand. If your hand had scattered opening values and a 6 card scraggly club suit, you should pass not bid 3 ♣.

But, it's important to understand that whenever RHO makes a competitive bid, if you make a free bid or call other than pass, you are showing something extra in values or distribution.

North now finds a 2nd bid that's from outer space. Your partner and South now make reasonable calls. So, the auction is back to you at 4 ♠.

The question is "Should you bid on?"

The first question to ask yourself -- "Have you already shown/bid the extent of values and distribution of your hand in your previous bids?" The answer is yes you have pretty much completely done that by bidding 3 ♣.

Then ask yourself -- "Do I have any extra distribution or values that might suggest we can make the contract at the next level?" The first place you look is at your holding in the opponent's suit. Here you have a doubleton which means you'll lose 2 tricks there unless your partner has a singleton or void. But there's no way for you to know if that exists. Likewise, your hand is fairly flat and devoid any other feature to suggest that 5 ♣ would make.

So, your proper action is to pass and leave the decision to compete further to partner. If partner has something like ♠ A ♥ A10xxxx ♦ xx ♣ Qxxx, partner may bid on when 4 ♠ is a make. But with the actual hand, partner will pass or double leading to a positive result.

Another important point -- once you've shown the values existing in your hand, don't keep bidding them over again. I've seen countless great results over the years from players doing exactly that. Even recently, my partner in the last half of a KO match bid to 4 ♥ after I raised. The opponents were competing in ♠ and competed further to 4 ♠. Partner took the push to 5 ♥ and went down several tricks. After the session, the team was discussing the results and partner, who is a very good player, identified his hand. The consensus was that partner had already bid his hand by bidding game and shouldn't have pushed on. So we all are guilty from time to time of falling overly in love with our hands, but it's something that it's important to minimize.

[1eyedjack]

rmnka447, on 2014-May-04, 23:43, said:

5 ♣ down 2 looks to be about as good a result as you can achieve at that contract.

Let's talk about the bidding a little.

<snipped - lot of repeated points with nothing new added>

Have you actually read the rest of this thread?

[rmnka447]

1eyedjack, on 2014-May-05, 00:06, said:

Have you actually read the rest of this thread?

I sure have and tried to make useful and thoughtful comments.

OP is obviously a fairly new player who's looking for some help/direction in how to improve.

While OP asked about the play on the hand, the real issue was getting too high. So, hopefully, some constructive comments on the auction and the thought processes involved in the bidding decisions would be useful to OP.

[1eyedjack]

rmnka447, on 2014-May-05, 01:17, said:

I sure have and tried to make useful and thoughtful comments.

OP is obviously a fairly new player who's looking for some help/direction in how to improve.

While OP asked about the play on the hand, the real issue was getting too high. So, hopefully, some constructive comments on the auction and the thought processes involved in the bidding decisions would be useful to OP.

I probably got out of bed the wrong side. It is rare for me to vent like that. What prompted it was these posts

http://www.bridgebas...post__p__792065

http://www.bridgebas...post__p__792068

http://www.bridgebas...post__p__792073

http://www.bridgebas...post__p__792075

all of which were devoted to the bidding aspects of the hand and which *I* thought were largely duplicated in the later post.

Not really a huge deal. Sorry I brought it up. I don't disagree with any of your analysis.

[Lovera]

My suggest is to go initially more slow and easy: try to read before books of Roger Trezel "The chaiers of bridge 1,2,3,4,5,6" very clear on different aspects of play for then passing to Bertrand Romanet "Total bridge" on plains of play more complicated but exaustive.(Lovera)

[deborahh]

I like the Bridge Movies on BBO. I use books as well, but sometimes there's too much information all at once. I need to process stuff more slowly, so I'll do one or two bridge movies a day. Also, the Beginner Intermediate Lounge (BIL) has free classes almost every day on BBO. It's $45 to join for the year. Here's the link. My link