Reading The Cards

Listening to the bidding.

Sometimes you can infer, with high confidence, the opponents distribution - and this information is often of value to declarer.

Imagine you are declarer (South) after the following bidding:

West NNorth East South
1     pass 1    2
2     3   pass  pass
pass

The King of hearts is led and dummy and your hands are:

                              North
                                A 8 3
                                7 5 4
                                K 8 2
                                Q J 5 3

                              South
                                K Q
                                A 3 2
                                A J 10 9 8
                                9 8 5

There is a wealth of information here:

• We have six hearts, so the opponents have 7 between them
• So their hearts must be split 4 (East) and (West) as they bid and raised hearts
• We have 5 spades, so the opponents have 8 between them
• So their spades almost certainly break 4-4 or eiither opponent would have bid a five card major
• So when we draw trumps (diamonds) we will know how many diamonds each had
• And thus we will know how many clubs they each have and so the distribution of all the suits.

Enjoy your bridge.

R. Wells Simple Tips with Big Impact
 

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