David Bird - Deceptive Card Play (The Bridge Technique Series)

Chapter 1 Choosing the Correct Honor Card

Selecting from touching honors Exceptions to high from equals Encouraging or discouraging a cover Making intermediate cards pull their weight Key points Quiz

Chapter 2 Disrupting the Declarers Signals Disrupting attitude signals in notrump Disrupting attitude signals in suit contract Using honors to encourage a continuation Holding up to discourage a continuation Disrupting count signals Disrupting suit preference signals Hiding a spot card Using the defenders count signals Deflecting a ruff Disrupting upside-down signals Key points Quiz

Chapter 3 Feigning Strength or Weakness Feigning weakness to hide the location of losers Feigning weakness to avoid a switch Feigning strength to resolve a guess Feigning strength to encourage a switch Feigning length or shortness Key points Quiz

Chapter 4 Creating a Losing Option Creating an imaginary loser Phantom finesses Pseudo-finesses Slipping past an honor Compacting the defenders trump tricks Key points Quiz

When deciding which of touching honors to play, you should aim to cre ate ambiguity in the mind of at least one defender. Suppose you are playing in a spade contract and this is one of the side suits:

7 6

J 9 8 4 3

Q 10 2

A K 5

West leads the 4 and East plays the queen. Should you win with the king or the ace? Since they are equals, you might wonder how it could possibly matter. It does!

Winning with the ace leaves both defenders in doubt about the position of the king. If, instead, you win with the king, both defenders can be certain that you also hold the ace. West will know because his partner failed to play the ace to the first trick. East will know because his partner would not have underled an ace against a suit contract. Conceding such gratuitous information at Trick 1 may enable a defender to place his partner with a key card in another suit, and therefore find the killing switch when he regains the lead.

Lets suppose now that you hold the king and queen instead.

9 7 4

A 10 8 3 2

J 6

K Q 5

West leads the 3 against your notrump contract, East playing the jack. If East is likely to gain the lead later, it may be right to allow the jack to win (breaking the link between the defenders). Assuming you are going to win the trick, though, should you do so with the king or the queen?

To work out the answer, put yourself in Wests position. If the jack loses to the queen, what will he know about the position of the king? Right, he will know that you have it. If East held something like KJ6, he would have played the king instead of the jack. By contrast, if you take the first trick with the king, the location of the queen remains a mystery. West may be tempted to continue the suit when he gains the lead.

The situation is similar when you hold the queen-jack:

A 7 4

K 9 8 3 2

10 6

Q J 5

West leads the 3. You play low from dummy and East follows with the ten. If you win with the jack, West will know that you also hold the queen. Unless he suspects that your remaining honor is bare, and can be pinned, he will not continue spades when he gets in. By captur

ing the ten with the queen instead, you leave West in the dark with regard to who holds the jack. He may elect to play his partner for this card, and hand you a third spade trick.