AUCTION MADE EASY.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 17907, 24 July 1926, Page 20 (Supplement)

AUCTION MADE EASY.

STILL PLAYING THE HAND. By PETER. No. 10. Let us get on with the more elementary tactics of playing the dummy hand. It is an old Auction Bridge rule that, if you arc lucky enough to hold nine trumps between your own hand and dummy’s, you do not try a finesse. That means, if you hold ace and queen five times, and dummy ten four times of trumps, or any other similar combination of nine trumps headed by the ace but minus the king, you do not, on leading from dummy up to your own hand, attempt to finesse the queen, in the hope that she will make good, and that, with king and one other only in the hand on your right, your next lead of the ace will catch the king. That may be a sound rule. Personally I depart from it, or observe it, according to the situation considered in all its bearings, which include the calling during the auction, and how my hand and dummy’s consort together. In the still happier event of holding ten trumps in your own and dummy’s hand, I think the no-finesse rule has much more imperative force. Obviously, the fewer trumps there are outside your two hands, the greater chance there 'is of the card you wish to catch, be it king or queen, falling oil the first or second lead. There are few Auction Bridge rules, governing the tactics of the play, that are as immutable as those of the Medes and Persians. That is what constitutes the charm of the game. If it were otherwise, and there were a hard-and-fast rule for all conceivable emergencies, Auction Bridge would be about as fascinating as shelling peas or shaking hands with a local M.P. It is like warfare, essentially an empirical opportunist science, and the way to excel at it is to bring a quick inference to bear on a close observation. The expert carefully notes, when he leads a suit, the size of his opponents’ cards, played on his top cards.

But he corrects the information thereby conveyed by his recollection of the calling, and his knowledge of the cards held in his own and dummy’s hand. So that he is unlikely as a rule to be caught by that very old booby trap, the deliberate playing of a false card. Mavbe, the opponent who so dejectedly plays his jack on your ace, holds als<i« the ten and nine of that suit in safe sequence. Playing the top card of a sequence, to bluff an opponent is an effective move sometimes, but there are often ways of checking it, and sometimes the deceit proves more disastrous to the user than the intended victim. It may, for example, utterly mislead the opponent’s partner. The favourite use of the false card move is when the player of the hand, having a fairly long suit with some top cards, fears the partner of the opponent who has led that suit may be short in it and able to ruff. A high card played then may possibly scare the leader off into some less dangerous suit from the player's point of view. Most old hands use these simple “wheezes” occasionally, especially when they know, or suspect, their opponent is a bit of a duffer or an inexpert novice. But* on occasion, judiciously employed, they must puzzle even the most experienced and level-headed players. A point that often perplexes inexperienced players is when not to lead trumps. I have already emphasised the vital rule about leading them. Curiously enough ladies seem the greatest offenders in this respect. Some feminine instinct urges them to hoard their trumps. Perhaps they feel that, once trumps are gone, they will lose that comforting Sense of “protection” inherent in their delightful sex since those rough old pre-historic times when sabretoothed tigers roamed the land, and gay chevaliers went awooing with a stone axe and a corrugated club. Or else the feminine subtlety of mind is specially fascinated by the prospects of being able to bring off a ruff. That manoeuvre, even though three or four good tricks are sacrificed to achieve it, seems to afford some ladies exquisite joy. But the only time a sound player neglects to draw trumps, when playing the dummy hand, is when he realises that more tricks can be scored by a certain and prompt cross-ruff. That means a position, with two suits one of which dummy is short in, and the other the player, where dummy’s and the player’s trumps can be made separately instead of falling together. I may remark that these situations are as rare as they are thrilling. And too often, when some not too sound player essays such tactics, the opponents ruthlessly upset all calculations by getting in. and drawing trumps themselves. There is one other exception to the trumps-out rule. When to draw the last trump entails leaving you, as the dummy player, minus one yourself, and exposed to a lead by your, opponents of a suit you are out of, manifestly you must refrain. In those trying circumstances, the best thing is to force the last' trump held by one of your opponents on a suit in which you hold commad.

That position often enough arises when the player of the hand finds, generally owing to the unequal or abnormal distribution of trumps, that the last trump in his hand is inferior to one held by one of the opponents, lie will then endeavour to establish an outside suit, in which he happens lo hold top honours and the trump holder is weak, with the object of compelling the latter to use his boss trump, not to draw the player’s own last one, and so leave him cold and bare in an austere wilderness, but to take a trick on a ruff. In the same way, when left in that embarrassing position, with the best trump in the euemy’s keeping, and no forcing suit to draw it, the player tries to manoeuvre so that the other opponent gets the lead, and has to lead a suit which the player can score his smaller trump on safely. I blush to specify these elementary moves, but these articles are for babes and sucklings, not for seasoned warriors. That point must be kept carefully in mind all the time. This is an attempt to help the weaker brethren—and sistren

—-not to gild the mature and perfect lilies. > * Old hands would need no introduction, for example, to so familiar a fuse as the far-famed Bath coup. This is I a very simple, quite obvious, but often most useful manoeuvre. It is employed when, for an example, an opponent leads through, or up to you, a suit in which you are Strong. * This may happen in any sort of call, but most often and joyously, in notrumps. Sav the lead in a jack of hearts. \ou hold the ace and queen well guarded. Do you take that jack with vour queen ? Not at all! You give it a run. Trusting that the delightful adversary will promptly lead again, either the king from his own hand, or a small one on which a too trustful partner may elately plank that king, according to which hands holds it. l hen you unmask your real guns, snap U P king with your ace,' and possiblv have that suit well and truly established even apart from the fact that your queen is now a regular Mrs Pankhurst. The compleat Auction Bridge player is full of full, of these little tricks and subtleties. lie rather resembles the gentleman described by u J u ,lr . V ’ w * lo outwardly looked as though butter would not melt in his mouth, but inwardlv was so compounded that he would “pull the pelt off a prehistoric pebble from the Dead Sea.” Beware of him- especiallv if he wears long white patriachial whiskers and looks like a Sunday School superintendent!