Eddie Kantar - Eddie Kantar Teaches Advanced Bridge Defense

Eddie Kantar

The opponents are bidding their heads off; suddenly, the bidding is over and its your lead. And just what have you been doing while the opponents were merrily sending these coded messages to each other across the table? Not daydreaming, I hope.

Defensive planning starts with the bidding and comes into clearer focus when the dummy appears. The bidding helps determine your opening lead. The dummy, partner's signals, and bridge logic help determine your follow-up plays. During the bidding you should be trying to build a picture of declarer's (and dummy's) distribution and strength. This picture also influences your opening lead. If the opponents wind up in a trump contract, you should ask yourself:

The answers to these questions help determine your lead. Although this chapter deals primarily with planning your defense after the dummy comes down, it can't hurt to review the opening-lead decision. After all, if you screw up on opening lead, it may be too late to recover no matter how clever a defender you are.

Opening leads can be categorized as: attacking, passive (including trump leads), short suit, or honor sequence. The last two are self-explanatory. Attacking leads are generally made in suits headed by the ace or king. They are made when you fear (or see) a long side suit in dummy or are looking for a ruff. Leading from long broken suits also falls under this category. These leads are often made when you (or partner) have four trumps and your goal is to whittle declarer's trump length down to your size or shorter. Passive leads are safe leads, leads that neither gain nor cost a trick. There is an art in knowing how and when to make passive leads. Much of this chapter will be spent going over this aspect of defensive play.

If you have an idea of how declarer will get rid of her losers, you may be able to thwart declarer's plans. Basically there are three ways declarer disposes of losers:

If (1) and (2), the two common techniques, are not available, declarer is usually stuck with whatever losers she has. There is no need for the defenders to rush madly to take their aces and kings, perhaps giving up tricks by attacking new suits. Declarer's losers aren't going anywhere. Dont panic!

This is a typical card combination where South, left to his own devices, has three losers and no winners. If the defenders get nervous and start the suit, declarer makes an undeserved trick.

If you and partner can identify these dangerous suits (not always easy), these are suits to stay away from, far away. Declarer, on the other hand, is either hoping you will make a friendly play in one of these suits, or failing that, wants to force you to lead one. Thus the constant struggle between the declarer and the defenders to see who can get the other to break a dangerous suit.

Once the dummy appears you can usually tell if you had it right with your choice of opening leads. If not, you may have to change horses in midstream. There are three common dummy types that should hit you in the face when you see them.

You lead the K to dummy's ace, partner's 10 and declarer's 7. You see that the dummy is pretty bleak. Furthermore, there is no possibility of long suit establishment. The only real value in this pitiful dummy is the doubleton heart.

Sure enough, declarer leads a heart to the jack and your queen at trick two. No need to cash the Q, that winner isn't going away. More important is to shift to a spade at trick three. Declarer can do no better than win in her hand and lead a low heart. Either you or partner can grab this and lead a second trump. Declarer can ruff only one heart in dummy and winds up losing three hearts and one club. When the only value dummy has is a short side suit, trump leads are usually top priority.

Of course, much depends upon how threatening the suit really is. For example: it may be a solid suit (very threatening); it may be a supported suit missing one honor (very threatening); you may be sitting behind the dummy with small cards in the suit so you know that if any finesses are required, they work (very threatening); or you may be sitting over the dummy with all of the missing honors and you know declarer cannot set up the suit (not threatening at all). Your defense (active or passive) depends upon your assessment of the danger of the long suit.

Partner leads the K and dummy hits with a very threatening suit, diamonds, plus a singleton heart. A dummy with a threatening side suit calls for an attacking defense, but a dummy with a side suit singleton calls for a trump switch. What to do?

The length and strength of dummy's side suit are so overwhelming (either declarer has the K or it can be finessed), that an active (attacking) defense takes precedence over a trump shift defense. Overtake the K and fire the J through declarer.