[rustysnow]

greetings all! am currently trying to understand and learn how to endplay and squeeze my opponents, with constant usage of the "Bridge Master" feature. does anyone have any advice in helping beginners like me in regards to this aspect? whilst i can understand the basic theory like eliminating a suit to cut out opp's communocation, i am still struggling with actually spotting endplay and squeeze opportunities. would appreciate any advice!

cheers, russell

[dsLawsd]

Practice is the key. Reading Watson's Play of the Hand followed by more advanced books can help. But really, it is visualization that makes it happen. Marshall Miles book All 52 Cards opened that area up for me. And there are other books similar that are more recent.

Lastly, Rodwell's Book The Rodwell Files can dramatically improve most peoples game and is amazing.

Work, work, work! You will get there!

[RD350LC]

dsLawsd, on 2019-December-18, 04:11, said:

Practice is the key. Reading Watson's Play of the Hand followed by more advanced books can help. But really, it is visualization that makes it happen. Marshall Miles book All 52 Cards opened that area up for me. And there are other books similar that are more recent.

Lastly, Rodwell's Book The Rodwell Files can dramatically improve most peoples game and is amazing.

Work, work, work! You will get there!

The one most important item to learn is to COUNT. If you were to ask 100 experts what the most important thing to learn how to do, 100 of them would say learn to count.
The first chapter of Hugh Kelsey (I may have the name wrong) book Killing Defence is entitled Counting.

[nige1]

rustysnow, on 2019-December-17, 20:46, said:

greetings all! am currently trying to understand and learn how to endplay and squeeze my opponents, with constant usage of the "Bridge Master" feature. does anyone have any advice in helping beginners like me in regards to this aspect? whilst i can understand the basic theory like eliminating a suit to cut out opp's communocation, i am still struggling with actually spotting endplay and squeeze opportunities. would appreciate any advice!

Lots of authors (e.g. Clyde C Love, Hugh Kelsey, Terence Reese) have written books on squeezes.
Darvis and Hart: Right through the pack.
Gorge Coffin: Endplays, Bridge Play from A-Z.
Ottilik and Kelsey: Adventures in Card Play
Hugh Darwen's famous Double-Dummy Corner
Richard Pavlicek's magnificent site


Using GIB's double-dummy analysis on seemingly routine BBO deals, can reveal surprizing possibilities, which reward further exploration and study.

[pescetom]

dsLawsd, on 2019-December-18, 04:11, said:

But really, it is visualization that makes it happen. Marshall Miles book All 52 Cards opened that area up for me. And there are other books similar that are more recent.

That is an interesting point, because I have several good books that address squeezes and endplays but none that go into detail about the underlying techniques of memorization and visualization. Many experts seem to assume that there are no specific techniques involved in memorizing even basic things like the unplayed cards in a suit or the probable shape of the two unknown hands, but I'm sure that there is often a lot more to it than simply "remembering things" in a non-verbal non-visual unstructured cache of certainties. Similarly with visualization, where I am sure people have tricks to maintain multiple hypotheses in place and navigate smoothly as things converge. If you or others know books that address this area (other than All 52 Cards, which I have not read) then I am all ears.

[barmar]

I think the expectation is that this just comes from experience.

When you're beginning, you have to use lots of brain power just keeping track of conventions, inferences from the auction, etc. There's little room left for keeping track of all the cards that have been played. In time, the basics of the game become second nature, and that makes it easier to think about more details.

This is the nature of expertise in any endeavor.

However, there are some tricks and shortcuts that can be learned. In any discussion of counting, you can't over-emphasize the power of learning patterns. There are thirteen cards in a hand distributed among 4 suits, and there are thirteen cards in a suit distributed among 4 players, so there are patterns common to both: 4333, 5332, 5431, etc. If you get used to grouping things like this, you don't have to think as much about each card.

There are probably old threads here and on Bridge Winners about how to learn to count hands.

[pescetom]

barmar, on 2019-December-18, 11:10, said:

I think the expectation is that this just comes from experience.

When you're beginning, you have to use lots of brain power just keeping track of conventions, inferences from the auction, etc. There's little room left for keeping track of all the cards that have been played. In time, the basics of the game become second nature, and that makes it easier to think about more details.

This is the nature of expertise in any endeavor.

That is certainly the expectation and of course there is some truth in it, after years you do get better at all of it including memorisation. But I can't believe it's all purely down to the 10,000 hours rule, or that people who find it "second nature" are not using some useful tricks that might work for those who don't. As you say patterns are important, but even without them people have different ways of fixing things in memory. Back in the days when everyone had to remember tens of telephone numbers I associated specific colours to each digit and somehow that helped. I had one bridge partner who maintained an impressively efficient visual matrix of the location and status of all cards, but he was coy about sharing how it actually looked and worked. I have learned to focus on the cards that are unplayed rather than already played, and to repeat verbal mantras like "five cards including the Jack and 9" which helps a bit (unless the opps deny you sufficient time to update it), but I'm sure I could be doing much more if I knew how.

[PhilG007]

rustysnow, on 2019-December-17, 20:46, said:

greetings all! am currently trying to understand and learn how to endplay and squeeze my opponents, with constant usage of the "Bridge Master" feature. does anyone have any advice in helping beginners like me in regards to this aspect? whilst i can understand the basic theory like eliminating a suit to cut out opp's communocation, i am still struggling with actually spotting endplay and squeeze opportunities. would appreciate any advice!

cheers, russell

Endplays and squeezes are advanced plays As you are still a novice,.my advice to you is learn to walk before you run. Master the basics first then as your experience grows, over the passage of time,,only then apply yourself to learning these techniques No player ever became great without first learning their ABCs

[miamijd]

rustysnow, on 2019-December-17, 20:46, said:

greetings all! am currently trying to understand and learn how to endplay and squeeze my opponents, with constant usage of the "Bridge Master" feature. does anyone have any advice in helping beginners like me in regards to this aspect? whilst i can understand the basic theory like eliminating a suit to cut out opp's communocation, i am still struggling with actually spotting endplay and squeeze opportunities. would appreciate any advice!

cheers, russell

Hi Russell. I admire your desire to improve your game.

David Bird (you know, the Abbot guy) wrote two books entitled "Bridge Endplays for Everyone" and "Bridge Squeezes for Everyone." Both are quite good.

If you are a beginner to intermediate player, I would learn basic endplays and what are called "simple" squeezes and stop there for the time being. I wouldn't spend any time on complicated stuff like strip squeezes (also known as squeeze endplays), criss-cross squeezes, or the like, because they are too difficult for the beginning player and only come up very rarely. You'll improve your game more by learning solid declarer play and defense.

[mikeh]

I learned at university in about 1973. Early on, my RHO led towards the Q in dummy and I, never one to miss an opportunity to win a trick, flew with the King. RHO, a far better player than I later complimented me for realizing that, had I ducked, I would later have been endplayed. I never let on that I had no idea what an endplay was, let alone that I had deliberately avoided one. Then in 1974 the Spring Nationals came to town and I played and placed overall in a Regionally rated Men's Pairs (back when Men's Pairs existed). On one hand we overbid to a poor slam and at the end of the hand I was surprised to take the 12th trick with some unassuming spot card.

When discussing the hands later, one of my friends, the same RHO from the first story, complimented me on finding the double squeeze. I had to go back to one of my few bridge books to find out what a double squeeze was.

Since I have subsequently been able to recognize and pull off pretty much every type of squeeze or endplay (I am sure I have simply not seen many, I am not claiming to be a true WC declarer) other than a smother play, something changed. What was it?

It was a combination of reading and working, working very hard.

Love on Squeezes was where I started and I still have a soft spot for it. Reese and Trezel put out a series of short, grossly overpriced books in the 1970's on single topics, and endplays were one. Kelsey's books, both on declarer play and defence contain a lot of squeezes and endplays and reward repeated readings.

But I want to endorse RD350LC's post about counting, and the others who have referred to visualization. To my mind, they are much the same. However, you can count without visualizing but you can't visualize without counting.

Counting is actually easy: but only if you practice, practice, and practice. Do you play socially with friends? If so, here's an exercise we used to do: we would deal a hand and bid and play it. After the auction, if both members of a partnership had bid, they'd write down what they thought their partner had. We wouldn't share that until the end of the play.

During the play, we'd stop twice: after 4 or 5 cards and after 8 or 9, and now all 4 players wrote down what they thought the others had.

This takes time, but it certainly promoted both counting and visualization.

Once you have learned to count semi-automatically, you are no longer requiring mental energy to 'know the count' and now you can use that mental energy to project what will happen if you cash a few more winners.

In fact, most players start seeing squeezes only after they pull off a few without knowing that they were doing so. If you are within 1 trick of making your contract, run off a bunch of winners, and you will sometimes find, as I did in 1974, that you have legitimately squeezed someone. Then later you can go over the hand and realize why that worked.

In short, and I am rarely short, bridge is a game where you have to work hard to become skilled.

And don't worry about anything beyond simple squeezes to start with: double squeezes, trump squeezes, criss-cross and so on rarely arise, but simple squeezes, strip squeezes (to set up endplays) and Vienna Coup squeezes happen relatively often.

Forget Rodwell and the Kelsey-Ottlik Adventures in Card Play. You will never encounter (or at least never recognize that you have encountered) most of the plays in the latter, which is a wonderful book but not in the least a good teaching book), and while I love The Rodwell Files, I would not suggest it as a good resource for learning the basics of squeeze and endplay technique.

[AL78]

PhilG007, on 2019-December-18, 14:28, said:

Endplays and squeezes are advanced plays As you are still a novice,.my advice to you is learn to walk before you run. Master the basics first then as your experience grows, over the passage of time,,only then apply yourself to learning these techniques No player ever became great without first learning their ABCs

I agree. Before learning advanced plays, learn the fundamentals first, starting with suit break probabilities, how to generate tricks and eliminate losers, and things like how to maximise trick taking potential from holdings like KT93 opposite Q42.

For an absolute basic start on squeeze play, you get to a position where you have one less winner than the number of cards you hold, you have a couple of high cards that are not quite winners (threats), and you have a run of winners to cash. After cashing those winners, a defender will sometimes have released a guard in a suit where you hold a threat, promoting that threat to a winner, either by mistake (the memory squeeze), or by force (they are trying to guard multiple suits and can't hold onto all key cards).

For both squeezes and endplays, you need key cards to be in a particular hand, and you need to be able to visualise the layouts you need for it to work. For a squeze to work, you need to make sure when you run your long suit, you aren't forced to discard a threat before a defender has to discard their cover card. For endplays, you should pay attention to the distribution of the defender's hands as they follow and discard, because it will require you to throw one of them in at a point where whatever they lead, they have to give you a trick. This often requires you to cash side suit winners to strip possible safe exit cards from the hand you want to throw in. I'll stop there as I have probably gone too far now.

https://en.wikipedia...ze_play_(bridge)
https://www.bridgebum.com/endplay.php

[hrothgar]

One minor point:

I suspect that you will find it easier to learn to recognize end plays than either squeezes or coups.
(Or at the very least, I do)

[armant2k]

RD350LC, on 2019-December-18, 08:02, said:

The one most important item to learn is to COUNT. If you were to ask 100 experts what the most important thing to learn how to do, 100 of them would say learn to count.
The first chapter of Hugh Kelsey (I may have the name wrong) book Killing Defence is entitled Counting.

I agree completely - COUNTING is the key to playing well.

ABC - (Always Be Counting) - even when it doesn't seem to be important in the situation with the hand you are holding. It is the only way to develop and hone the skill so it available to you when it IS important.

BTW, the full title of Hugh Kelsey's book is "Killing Defense at Bridge". I also like "The Art of Card Reading at Bridge" by Fred L. Karpin, and William S. Root's "How to Play a Bridge Hand" and "How to Defend a Bridge Hand". All emphasize early, and then through out their texts, that counting is critical to playing well.

[gwnn]

Go through Bridge Master deals on BBO. They are amazing and free! They have lots of endplays and squeezes, some simple and some impossible. I recently rediscovered them and I feel like my play improved a lot, despite the fact that I had gone through them a few times already a few years ago.

[nige1]

Gonzalo Goded's (Fluffy's) fascinating BridgeGod site

[Strangway]

I disagree with the 10,000 hr rule on this one. Bridge squeezes have basic rules that are best learned and understood by reading one of the books people have mentioned. Once you understand the technical theory (rectifying the count, which hand your threats are in, preserving your entry etc.) then the 10,000 hours will be of use.

[pescetom]

Strangway, on 2019-December-19, 10:59, said:

I disagree with the 10,000 hr rule on this one. Bridge squeezes have basic rules that are best learned and understood by reading one of the books people have mentioned. Once you understand the technical theory (rectifying the count, which hand your threats are in, preserving your entry etc.) then the 10,000 hours will be of use.

I think that is for sure, squeezes are not easy but it's all well explained. Memorization is where people seem to assume that the 10,000 hour rule is the only answer for those who don't find it automatic.

[gwnn]

nige1, on 2019-December-19, 05:34, said:

Gonzalo Goded's (Fluffy's) fascinating BridgeGod site

gwnn's fascinating video series on bridgemaster!

https://youtu.be/fz5i-gdTBmA

(the videos are really bad but bridge master is awesome)

[neilkaz]

David Bird's books on both topics are good.

[blackshoe]

Q: How do you get to Carnegie Hall?
A: Practice, practice, practice!