Knowing What Cards Remain vs Remembering Cards Played
Hi everyone, today we are going to work on our counting at bridge. Don't be put off, it's not really that hard. The trick is to remember our true goal is to work out what cards are remaining rather than trying to remember what cards have been played.
Play This Hand With Me
I'm going to open 1♣. North bids 1♥ and I can now bid 2NT to show 18-19 points and a balanced hand. North bids 3NT and that's the end of the bidding.
Clues From The Lead
West leads the ♠3. How many spades did West start with? It's almost certainly four. The lead system that the opposition are playing is fourth highest from long suit, so if West led the ♠3, what could West's fifth highest spade be? He can't have one because we've got the ♠2 in the north hand. There are no lower spades than the ♠3 in the West hand. West must have started with four spades, therefore East started with three.
Hand Shapes
Very important point, we don't want to be counting those. We don't want to be adding them up. We don't want to be going, okay four in the west hand plus three in the north hand, that's seven plus three in the south hand, that's ten. Thirteen minus ten is three. East must have three spades. Much too much brain power going on there.
We need to be familiar with a few hand shapes. For example, 4-3-3-3. Four in the west hand, three in the north hand, three in the south hand, three in the east hand. It could be 3-3-4-3, 3-3-3-4, 3-4-3-3. Variations on that 4-3-3-3 pattern, but once you've got it, it's really simple.
Let's look at the heart suit. It's four in the north hand, three in the south hand. So 4-3, maybe there 4-3-3-3 again.
Maybe there 4-4-3-2. 4-4-3-2 is another very common hand shape. Let's check.
What's Happening In The Heart Suit?
I'm going to win the ♠Q and play over to the ♣K and finesse the hearts. I don't mind losing this to West because my ♦K is still protected. West can't attack the diamonds without giving me a diamond trick.
The ♥J wins, luckily. Let's play king of ♥K, ♥A. Everybody follows suit leaving this position. That means the distribution of the heart suit was 4-3-3-3.
We worked out that West started with four spades and East started with three. We weren't counting, we just worked that out from the opening lead.
We played three rounds of hearts and everybody followed suit. So West started with three hearts and East started with three hearts. Can you visualize East's spades and East's hearts?
Completing the Picture
Now the cool thing is we only need to know one more suit and we've got all four hands figured out. So I'm just going to play that nine of hearts while I'm in the North hand and then a club to the ♣A.
East and West both follow to the second round of clubs meaning that they started with two each. Now we know the distribution of all four hands. We've done no counting.
The Four Hands
So West, we know, started with four spades. We worked that out from the lead. We know that West started with three hearts and we know that West started with two clubs because East and West started with two clubs each.
If West was four spades, three hearts, two clubs, how many diamonds did West start with? If you know the 4-4-3-2 hand shape, you just know that shape. 4-4-3-2.
Getting Better And Faster At Working Out Hand Shapes
Now you'll be thinking I just can't do all that so fast. Maybe not yet, but if you learn those hand shape patterns well you'll find it all much easier. You can practice using the card counting practice tool.