Finding The Lady

355bridgeL

Placing the high cards - part I .

The phrase 'finding the lady' is said to arise from a 3 card scam played on unsuspecting visitors to old style fairgrounds. Whether this is true or not, in these cases the lady was almost always never correctly located, but in bridge...

When partner leads and dummy goes down on the table, sometimes many of the key cards can be placed with a high degree of confidence - making the subsequent defence much easier. An example may assist.

Against the bidding 1 spade by South and 4 spades by North, partner leads the 2 of clubs and you see dummy has:

Several key cards can be placed as being in declarers hand. Let us look at each suit in turn and see what we can deduce.

In spades declarer has at least 4 cards and at most the Jack. In hearts partner cannot have the AK or he would have led from his holding, so declarer must have at least one of them. The same can be said of diamonds. Since partner would not normally underlead an Ace in a suit contract declarer must have that card and also must have at least one of the King or Queen or partner would have led the King.

So we can visualise declarers hand as being at least as good as:

spades x x x x
hearts K ?
diamonds K ?
clubs A Q ?

Did you work that out before declarer called for a card from dummy? If you put your mind to it you really can have x-ray eyes.

Enjoy your bridge.
R. Wells clubs diamonds Simple Tips with Big Impact hearts spades

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