While we're trying to win extra tricks when we're playing a hand of bridge, the opposition are busy trying to set up winners for themselves. A hold up play can make defence harder for the opposition.
|
Watch on YouTube |
Hi everyone, I'm going to open this 1NT, showing 15 to 17 points. If you're playing Acol then you would open 1♦ and re-bid no trumps. That's not important, the important thing is that we get to 3NT, which you will do in either system.
West leads the ♠K and we need to make nine tricks. So we've got one spade trick for sure, three heart tricks, ♥A, ♥K, ♥Q, so we're up to four tricks. We've got the ♦A, ♦K, so we're up to six tricks.
We need three more tricks which can only come from the club suit. So we're going to attempt to knock out the ♣A, then get three club tricks. In the meantime, the opposition are trying to knock out the ace of spades and get a whole bunch of spade tricks.
What I'm going to do here is duck the first two rounds of spades and win the third round. Duck just means duck, let it go. Win the ace of spades, now I'm going to play a club.
I'll play the ♣K and eventually the opposition are going to take their club trick. Of course I've got no spades left but East plays a diamond. Why did East play a diamond? And the reason is that East has got no spades left in her hand.
What we've done by ducking those first two rounds of spades is break the communication between East and West. It meant that when we lost the lead, the person with the ♣A could not play a spade to get back to partner's hand. Let's have a look at all four hands.
So 3NT making 3 for a score of 400. Notice that West had five spades and East only had three spades. So when East got in with the ace of clubs she had no more spades left to play a spade over to West.
If West had held the ♣A we would have gone down. There was nothing we could do about that. If the spades had been four in each hand, so if West had four spades and East had had four spades, then that's okay.
We would have just lost three spade tricks and one club trick. So what we're doing with that ducking for two rounds is that we are catering for the person with the ♣A having no more spades left. It's a very common technique in no trumps and sometimes used in a suit contract.
But how many times should declarer hold up? Here's where the rule of 7 can help.