CAN YOU PLAY AUCTION BRIDGE?

Star (Christchurch), Issue 17877, 19 June 1926, Page 9

CAN YOU PLAY AUCTION BRIDGE?

TUNING UP THE GAME; ASSESSING A HAND. Xo. 5. »BY PETER.) Having thus briefly, and I hope clearly, given a rough-and-ready synopsis of the guiding principles of bidding at auction bridge, as practised by the average tolerably experienced player accustomed to pretty keen company at the card-table, let us as succinctly deai with outstanding points about the tactics of playing the cards. The real basis of sound play consists in getting the habit of noting acurately each card played, not merely in the trump suit, but in every suit, and deducing how the undisclosed cards still to be played are most probably allocated. To utter novices this may sound rather a tall order. It is in reality the simplest thing imaginable, easily mastered by anyone, without necessarily possessing first-class brains, but not unless a serious effort is made to do it. After ail there are only thirteen cards in each suit, and but four suits, and the cards are graduated so that it is child’s play to keep the sequence of their falling during the play accurately in mind. It becomes, in next-to-no time, a mere process of photographic memory. . Let us begin at the beginning. When you have sorted and arranged your hand carefully, noting that you have the full quota, and the salient points, listen to the bidding keenly. Directly the dummy hand goes down if you are on the defending side study the exposed cards intelligently first in relation to the bidding and second in conjunction with your own hand. If you hold the king of hearts, for example, and dummy has the ace, decide what you will do if the player of the hand attempts a finesse through you. Nothing is more fatal, in these or similar circumstances, then even a second's hesitation when the crisis of that finesse arrives. No respectable or sporting auction bridge player dreams of making signals, other than those allowed and expected by the legitimate play of the cards, to his partner, who would disown him if he did. Yet one is constantly meeting quite nice people, apparently keen if not very intelligent card players, who consistently signal to the enemy, and convey to him information often of crucial value in winning a call. Always play your cards as briskly as possible, yet without undue precipitancy, and invariably at the same methodical rate. An instant’s pause not only may, but certainly will, betray the whole situation to the alert opponent who is in doubt perhaps about a finesse. Do not signal in this way to the enemy’s citadel. And never', let me add, as some unpleasant people do. attempt to make false signals. To hesitate unduly, in order to convey the impression you have a card that actually you do not hold, is not only dishonest but illegal. At auction bridge no signalling whatever is permissible designedly, and all players should really cut out even unconscious or unwitting signalling. Another egregious blunder made by a still larger number of players is to begin to play their card before their turn. How many times a rubber game has been elately snatched from the doubling because of that silly habit of letting your hand go up to your card, ready to draw it, before your turn actually* arrives, I should not like to calculate. That simple gesture has told innumerable players, when in an almost hopeless plight, whether to pass a card or trump it. You will not lose any time —and you will save much valuable money—if you wait until it is vour turn to play before you stir a muscle These may be very elementary points, but these are avowedly elementary instructions, and some players, who certainly rank themselves experts, often neglect them, especially the last one. A more glaring indiscretion still, to which a great many ambitious players are prone, is remarking, generally towards the end of a hand: “ Do we want any' more tricks, partner?” Often enough that inquiry gives away a vital card in the naive questioner's unhappy partner's hand. Auction bridge is one of innumerable good things that are all the better if practised with a little firm discipline. Sloppiness is seldom really attractive, whether in wearing clothes or manipulating pasteboards. If you are on the left of the player of the hand, and the right of dummy, you will have the onus of making the first lead. Make sure it really is your lead before doing so. The player who leads out of his turn is an expensive nuisance, and spoils the game. If your partner has made a call, your lead will be normally his suit. At no-trumps, without an exception. the highest card you hold of that suit None cases out of ten that rule holds good even though it is not no trumps, but a suit call by your opponents. But, in either instance, if you hold an ace and king of some other suit, not being the trump suit, you must first of all lead your king, so as to disclose to your partner that you hold the ace too. He will know then what to lead back when his own suit is exhausted There arc heaps of players who give their partners apoplectic fits by carefully refraining from leading, even at no-trumps, the suit that wretched man called. Their excuse is always the same. “ He called no-trumps over your suit call, partner, and T thought he would be sitting over your cards! ” I have, not once, but scores of times, seen a rubber call scored thus, which would otherwise have foundered hopelessly, two or three undertricks deep. There is only’ one conceivable excuse for failure to lead your partner’s suit call against no-trumps—unless you happen not to have one card of that particular suit and that is a suit of your own that commands four or five certain tricks oft the reel. The player who ignores this elementary rule is a dyed-in-the-wool mugwump, and ought to take to cat’s-cradle or snap. They would better suit his refulgent mental attainments. And now suppose you are not the opening leader at notrumps, but third man. with dummy between you and your partner. He has called a suit, and leads it. You have a card that takes the trick, probably because the player of the hand reserves his ace. It is your practical Christian duty to lead it back to him, though vou have only one card left in it. unless by so doing you are obviously putting him up against a brick wall in dummy. This does not mean merely that dummy happens to have an ace or a king, only*, in which case you must certainly return the lead but that he has the ace. and such supporting cards that your partner's top cards would be palpably jammed between the upper and the lower millstones. Perhaps the prize idiot of the Auction Bridge table is the player who. taking the trick on his partner's suit lead at no-lrumps forthwith proceeds to change the suit on the pretext, such circumstances as I have mentioned apart, that he was "leading up to weakness, partner! ” The foeman has gone no-trumps. Ife $6 probably weakest in your partner’s suit. Your partner most likely has little outside his suit. Ten to one your artless lead ‘‘up to weakness,” if it doas not play right into the enemy's f robs your £oar partner, befgr*

his suit is established by* drawing the opponent’s stoppers, of his one and only possible card of reentry! Don’t do it! It not only , as Polonius says “dulls the edge of husbandry,” but turns meek churchwardens into raging troopers. If you do this thing, and any' deserved fatality docs overwhelm you. there will be no wreaths worth mentioning. And here, before resuming consideration of the best leads, let one crucial point be hammered in. Whatever the call, but more essentially at no-trumps keep grimly on the alert for your partner’s first discard. If y*ou have called a suit, and managed to establish it, he will have to throw some cards away. All should be noted, but the first is absolutely vital. That is a message, blazoned through megaphones of eloquent silence across the fable to you. It shouts: ‘ Don't lead this—it is my weakest suit! ’ You on your part will faithfully do the same for your partner. Your first discard will invariable be from the suit you most emphatically do not want him to lead you. This is not only invaluable as a mutual guide to where your partnership strength lie", but it may often be employed most artfully to stop a possible fatal lead through your barely guarded stopper in another suit. Need it be adde that, if it happens that you are playing the dummy hand, and 'endeavouring to make a call, VO u should look out most vigilantly for these telltale signals. A discard will, if you can reason it out as a genuine bird and not a deceitful decoy, assist your tactics immensely. Especially at notrumps. It is by consistently conveying, and noting, these card signals that so many players become “lucky” with their finesses. It is the sort of “luck” thAt backs fiead certainties after the race, .. „ ,