AUCTION MADE EASY

Taranaki Daily News, 18 December 1926, Page 23

AUCTION MADE EASY

THE ART OF BRIDGE PLAYING

A FEW PARTING WORDS.

(By

Peter.—Copyright.

NO. 12.

Needless to say, the remarks about finessing must be applied with intelligent understanding to almost innumerable parallel cases to those actually quoted. Xf you have a king in dummy, when you are playing the call hand, you must, being yourself minus the ace, finesse a email card up to him. You then trust to the same fifty-fifty chance of the aee being to windward and not on the dangerous lee side of that valuable monarch. But there may also .be a chance, in such a case, of getting the fourth player, on your own righthand, to lead up to him. That makes him a certainty, of course, and therefore, except in utter desperation, number four is unlikely to oblige you. Still, towards the end of a hand, it may, with a little subtle thought, be possible to force him into that horrid plight.

Of course, if you happen to be that number four, and hold the ace guarding that king in dummy, you will take meticulous care, in case you are thrust into the lead at the end of the hand, to discard all that suit except the ace. But not too soon! Because then a watchful foe, playing the dummy hand, may lead up to your bare ace, and, if he gets in on your following lead, with a trump perhaps on some other suit, having carefully refrained from playing his dummy’s king the first time, when your bare ace fell, will proceed gaily to make that king. These are the little niceties of keen Auction Bridge play that make

life worth living. And that brings me to another point of great moment. The calling during the preliminary auction must be a valuable guide to your finessing. If you have won the bidding, and the player on your left has called hearts” you will naturally expect him to hold top honours in that suit. So if he opens with a heart lead, and you hjive the king in dummy, it looks pretty good. If you have king and one other only in dummy, your only chance of making that king, of course, is to play him right away, unless you hold the queen in your own hand. In that ease you can please yourself, though normally, if your queen is guarded by more than one small card, the king

from dummy is your best and obvious play. A favourite trick with old hands, if they suspect a weakness in the player’s game, is a low lead from an ace suit, particularly if they have not called it. The player may then, if he has the king in dummy, get the wind up, and pass it, enabling the queen in number four’s hand —number three in actual order of play on that occasion—to score. This may not greatly matter in some cases, but on the other hand it may be very crucial—if number four has queen and another only, and leads it promptly back as most assuredly he would! Dummy’s nice little king would then be beyond all hopes of insurance at Llyods even as an outside risk.

Another very elementary tip for

novices! If a suit is led of which dummy has one only, and you hold the ace, do not hesitate about playing that aee as quickly as you can get it out. Otherwise you run a very obvious risk,

which amounts to a certainly if dummy holds any trimps at all, of “boiling’’ that good ace. And few things make you look so like an Auction Bridge version of an immature Boy Scout in very shot knicks as “boiling” an ace. It hurts your prestige enormously, aitd makes your partner restive. One of the most important things at Auction is to retain your partner’s confidence; and to deserve it! An . exception to this rule, of planking down the ace at once on a suit of which dummy holds one only, is

manifestly a no-trump call. Then, unless it is your partner’s lead, as there is no fear of being trumped, and a possible danger of at once establishing the player’s longest suit, it may be worth your serious consideration whether to hold back a bit. But, even at no-trumps, beware of “boiling” aces or kings.

If you are playing the dummy hand, whether at no-trumps or on a suit call, do not too hastily take a trick in one hand which gives you an option of taking it in either. Ponder most astutely first where you may want the lead retained. Disaster after disaster, particularly but by no means exclusively at no-trumps, has followed undue precipitancy, and lack of clear prevision, in this’ matter. If dummy has some suit that, once established, promises several scoring tricks, your bloodthirsty opponents are bound, if they are worth their tobacco, to make an instant dead set, as you must never fail to do yourself in similar circumstances, at getting all dummy’s cards of reentry out of the wav. This they will do in order later on to have the agreeable spectacle—to them! of i number of bona-fide winning cards in dummy’s hand, which, owing to dummy’s hand having no possible card*wrtli which t’o get in and lead, are doomed to shed their sweetness on the desert air. This situation, so painfully apparent to your partner, the most absorbed spectator present, is heart-breaking! From the word “Go,” when the first lead is made, decide where you want to retain the cards of reentry, if you fortunately have several. The player who deliberately throws away dummy’’! cards of reentry, when he obviously has lots of late-on tricks to score from the dummy hand, is one whose obituary notice, real cardplayers set to jazz music. As a personal valedictory favour, I appeal to you not to do it! Life is real, life is earnest, and tlie bankruptcy court is not its goal! There is one excellent ruse that all serious Auction Bridge players should thoughtfully bear in mind. Some fairly good exponents occasionally seem to forget its uses. Suppose you hold, in your own hand or dummy's matters not, a longish suit of which, between you, you possess tile ace and king without the queen. It is a common enough situation, especially at no-trumps, and worth attention. It may be essential that you should make every trick but one in that suit, and, unless it is cleared on the first lead, you may never be able to get it going. This is the position when one band of the two holds only two cards in that suit.

Say you, as the player hold, seven and three only, and dummy holds aceking five or six times. Obviously, if you play out the aee and king, you are going to lose that lead, unless you fortunately have cards of reentry in r dummy, on the third lead, and forfeit

two or three certain tricks. In that ease resort to the simple device known as “ducking.” Lead your seven from your own hand, and pass it in dummy. Four cards will thus fall. Next time you are “in,” either yourself or in dummy, lead out the king and aee. It is rank bad luck, and most unprovidential distribution of the cards, if the jack and queen do not drop on the second of dummy’s top-honour leads, and thus enable you to make every card in the suit except the first one you so cunningly let the enemy score. That is giving a sprat to catch something, as our old friend Polonius says—and I fancy the old gentleman played a keen hand at Snap—“very like a whale!” A right glorious sensation—when it comes off. And, believe me, the odds are on the coup every time. Besides, if you can get your call only by making all but one of that suit, what alternative have you, as" a sober sensible citizen? Where there is only one way of getting home with a call, and all other ways spell disaster, is it commonsense to hesitate about taking an odds-on gamble? There is another little trick, which is not so safe and not so orthodox, but nevertheless sometimes comes off. Suppose you have gone a no-trump call, possible taking unusual risks in order to stave off a possible rubber call by the enemy. And when the dummy hand goes down you discover, to your most secret horror, that dummy has no guard in what is your most weak and vulnerable suit. If that suit is the one led, as most probably it will be, you must resign yourself to your fate, and a coolly skiful rearguard action, as best you may. But suppose your luck is in, and that weak suit is not lead? Some daring old hands then try, on the first convenient opportunity a risky bluff. They deliberately lead that weak suit, preferable from dummy up to their own carefully concealed weakness! It may be the opponents “tumble,” and play havoc. But often enough, when you pass that lead as you do, holding nothing in the suit worth mentioning, but carefully playing your highest card, possibly a ten or nine, the opponents suspect an attempted Bath coup, and shy away from the weakest suit you hold most beautifully. It is worth trying occasionally, in a tight corner, but it is much better to try avoiding the tight corner if you can; One final limit may not be too obvious to be necessary for some inexpert players of the dummy hand. Always if possible, finess through the opponent with the stronger hand. Never, unless compelled, finesse into the hand of the player who doubled a call, or, at notrumps, into the hand of the man who called a suit against you.

And, so, my patient little friends, I must leave you. “Peter” makes you a fraternal grizzled salute and wishes you, all of your, good sport, good luck, and good-tempered partners!