Congratulation, advancing Street Smart Bridge thrill seekers –  in our 6th installment here we wrap-up by considering the ins and outs of C.I.A. – Counting, Inferences, Algorithms, being aware (of ourselves and others), the ecosystem and its environmental factors, the Seven Deadly Sins as enumerated by the Dallas Aces international Bridge team winning the Bermuda Bowl, the Bridge Proprieties (including etiquette and ethics), as well as how to be and evaluate sound partnerships.

Counting goes far beyond the High Card Points held in our 13 cards.  What did the opponents bid, what inferences can we make about their calls/plays/tempo/mannerisms/gestures?  What does the lead tell us? And how about the 2nd and 3rd hand play?  And how is the trick-by-trick Bridge story unfolding, including the attendant attitude, count and suit direction plays by the defenders?

But wait, there’s far, far more to Bridge than this!  After all, we all have egos, different communication styles, give occasional “tells” and more.  Yes, sometimes we all are at at a loss to concentrate, fall victim of fatigue and/or become fixated elsewhere (redirection, as a magician would proclaim).  Hopefully you “live in the now” and appreciate the joy of experiencing the current moment and avoid the temptation to be seduced by the past or future.  Better yet, strive to achieve your partnership’s best result, not some lofty (and repeatedly unattainable) best result possible.

And since fabric of Bridge partnerships are interwoven with our emotional side, it pays to consider attitude swings, positive and negative swings, the psyche of assertive and passive players, empathy/intimidation/conciliatory relationships, confidence/confusion/fear, the “X Factor,” partners biased in either substance or form.

Speaking about Bridge environmental factors, we identify the “top 10” attributes for Street Smart Bridge Players and how they affect and lead to our success.  Of course, no Bridge discussion is complete without discussing competition, vulnerability and attendant risk/reward relationships.

Finally, addressing ACBL laws 72-75, we summarize some of the highlights of the dos and don’ts, including etiquette, ethics – what’s kosher, according to Hoyle… or not!

In total, this 128 minute lesson is chalk full of pithy discussions and scenarios along with lots of bidding and animated card play with stimulating commentary.

Ready, Aim, FIRE – on with the show…

Part 1 – Introduction to being Street Smart, playing two defender hands – 32:32 minutes of video
Free, Premium, ULTRA, Part 2 The Emotional side to Bridge – 27:39 minutes of video
Premium and ULTRA Members click here to view Part 3 on Bridge Environmental Factors, Risk/Reward strategies and tactics as well as being an effective competitor – 38:27 minutes of video
Premium and ULTRA Members click here to view Part 4 on the Laws: Proprieties, Ethics, Etiquette, find and evaluating sound partnerships – 18:16 minutes of video

And best yet, here at BridgeHands all of our Bridge hands are full of commentary (regardless of who is the declarer and defender) and analysis on hand evaluation, bidding and animated card play.   As always, our hand discussion offers a refreshingly rare glimpse of Bridge inside the minds of all four players at the table as play progresses, bid by bid, card by card.  Visitors are welcome to view the Part 1 series of our video lesson with nuances that will lead to quick and sound bidding without guesswork.  Those with the Free BridgeHands  membership may also watch Part 2 where we play more hands with provocative play tips and strategies, as well as way to improve skills by critiquing student players. As a Premium and ULTRA member, you are welcome to enjoy the entire four-part lesson segments with lots of hands, plus an opportunity to view future shows during your membership subscription period.   And as always, be sure to check out the hundreds of hours of videos in our archive that is growing by leaps and bounds, by clicking “Index to Videos” on the navigation above or simply click this link.

Bridge Teachers – you may download your personal copy of our copyrighted video lesson here:

Social Lesson 19 – Day 6, Part 1

Social Lesson 19 – Day 6, Part 2

Social Lesson 19 – Day 6, Part 3

Social Lesson 19 – Day 6, Part 4

Happy Trails,

BridgeHands

Our BridgeHands HOT-W (Hands Of The Week) videos offer extemporaneous, fast-paced videos lessons watching a variety of real people play real hands at the table.  For most hands we will compare and contract competitive bidding and play at various tables to highlight Bridge at its best and … well, you know the rest!
So in addition to the full classroom lessons below, be sure to check out our snappy HOT-W sessions.  Those with our BridgeHands Free or Premium membership can view a glimpse of each lesson – ULTRA members can view the entire shows as well as hundreds of hours of our Polling You, Social and Advanced lessons.  Click here or INDEX OF VIDEOS – HOT-W (above, upper right).

Minor Suit 6-5 Strong Jump Shifts with Suit Quality, Losing Trick Count

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Greetings Bridge Friends,

Welcome to another BridgeHands “Extra” lesson that intercedes our more voluminous, full length episodes.  Again you will have an opportunity to demonstrate your Strong Jump Shift bidding skills as well as some play skills from our prior lessons.

Click here to view Part 1 of the video lesson

Click here to view Part 2 of the video commentary

Click here to view Part 3 of the video commentary

Click here to view Part 4 of the video commentary

In these exercises, again South will hold very distributional hands with a 6-5 suit shape.  So when both long suits are in the MINORS and we are holding six-five shape, should we still “6-5, come alive?”  As we witnessed in our prior lessons, first off we should consider Suit Quality (of 9+), looking for a good Semi Self-Sustaining-Suits or better.   Also recall, we ought to look ahead and ponder whether we are prepared to play in a 3 Notrump contract, push to a 4 level contract in the minor, or go all the way to an 11 trick minor suit game or beyond.  Okay, let’s explore the wild world of minor suit 6-5 hands, moving around a card here and there and measure the impact on the bidding, line of declarer play and available tricks.  Be sure to view the entire video along with the concluding remarks for additional details.

In order to generate many more video lessons, beginning in the year 2013, we plan to frequently produce shorter, concise “no frills” video lessons without our all the detailed hand diagrams and written commentary.  You will find these lessons here on our blog in the Social and Advanced categories under the subheading Bidding and Play (see top of any blog page).   On a less frequent basis, we will continue to generate our popular and more comprehensive “Polling You” series.

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Click here to view Part 1 of the video lesson

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Premium/ULTRA – Click here to view Part 3 of the video commentary

Premium/ULTRA – Click here to view Part 4 of the video commentary

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Strong Jump Shifts with 6-5: Suit Quality, Self-Sustaining Suits, Losing Trick Count

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Greetings Bridge Friends,

Welcome to BridgeHands lesson #80 where you will again have an opportunity to demonstrate your Strong Jump Shift bidding skills as well as some play skills from our prior lessons.

In these exercises, South will hold very distributional hands with a 6-5 shape in the major suits.  As the Bridge cliché goes, when holding six-five, “come alive.”  True, some would rather not spend much time thinking about “freak hands” considering that the six-five combinations only come up 1.4 percent of the time (6-5-1-1 and 6-5-2-0 are each .7 percent). Yet as we’ve seen in our prior lessons, even with so-called freak hands, wise players always consider Suit Quality, Self or Semi Self-Sustaining-Suits, Losing Trick Count and partner’s receptivity considering fit, Cover Cards and honors.   In fact, in our next lesson we will give special consideration when both our long suits are in the minors where we must choose between an 11 trick minor suit game, slam or risking a 3 Notrump game contract.  But for now, let’s focus on 6-5 hand in the major suit.  In both lessons we will evaluate the worth of singleton honors, a side suit doubleton with a primary honor as well as a worthless doubleton.  And as always, we will move around a card here and there, measuring the impact on the bidding, line of declarer play and available tricks.  In fact, most of these hands will require careful declarer and defender play to find the best contract so be forewarned, alert and put on your thinking cap!  Finally, be sure to view our entire video lessons along with the concluding remarks for additional details.

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Recall in our prior lessons the criteria for our advanced hand evaluation methods:

Highlights – Losing Trick Count and Cover Cards

– Prerequisite: 8+ card trump fit or self-sustaining suit
– Ace-King-Queen are not losers in 3+ card suits (except Q x x in a side suit)
– Generally, fourth card and beyond are not losers
– LTC – CC equals losers, as 6 LTC – 3 CC = 3 losers (major suit game)
– Extras: 5+4 trump, working Queens and Jacks, shortness

Trump Fit or Self-Sustaining Suit

1. LTC is normally a 5-3 or longer major suit fit
2. Occasionally one player has a long, strong suit
3. We need an independent method to determine the suit quality and LTC when one player has a long, strong suit
4. When evaluating Suit Quality, we generally assume partner may hold a singleton to ascertain the losers (LTC) in a long suit
5. Adjust the above when partner bids Notrump, indicating 2+ card support

Self-Sustaining Suit and Suit Quality

1. Limited to 1 loser when partner holds a singleton
2. Reserved for situations when a player holds a long, strong suit
3. Suit Quality equals the number of useful honors plus the suit length
4. Self-Sustaining Suit usually equals a Suit Quality of 10 or more, lose 0-1 tricks
5. Semi Self-Sustaining Suit equals a Suit Quality of 9, lose 1-2 tricks

Please refer to our Lessons 76 – 79 for more on LTC and Cover Card hand evaluation.

 Hand 1 (variation of Eddie Kantar hand 10)

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Strong Jump Shifts, Suit Quality, Losing Trick Count

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Greetings Bridge Friends,

Welcome to BridgeHands third “Extra” lesson that intercedes our more voluminous, full length episodes. Again you will have an opportunity to demonstrate your Strong Jump Shift bidding skills as well as some play skills from our prior lessons.

Premium/ULTRA – Click to view video – Polling You 79 Extra 3, Strong Jump Shift

Premium/ULTRA – Click to view video – Polling You 79 Extra 3 – Part 2, Strong Jump Shift

In these exercises, South will hold strong two-suited hands with 5 great Spades, 5 Clubs and one or more top honor along with a red suit stiff Ace and a King doubleton.   While North will only hold a small Spade singleton, the good news is that partner will also have 5 Clubs and an assortment of 7-8 High Card Point combinations.     As we know, the three primary ways to make additional tricks are ruffs, promotions and finesses.    Also, when in slam with a two-suiter and a secondary fit, it’s not uncommon for the declarer to ruff out a 5 card suit with a 5-1 fit, anticipating the opponents hold a 4-3 pattern in the suit (62 percent odds).  In these exercises, we will explore various bidding and play combinations.  We will also move a few cards here and there to see the impact of bidding and play.   Be sure to view the entire video along with the concluding remarks for additional details.

Polling You #79 Extra 3a

South holds a black hand with a 5=2=1=5 shape with 19 High Card Points plus a few more length points.   And while South would like to immediately begin counting Losing Trick Count, the Suit Quality in Spade is only 8, 5 long plus 3 in length (we need a SQ of 9 or more).  Many West’s will overcall 2 Diamonds despite the vulnerability.   South North pass after interference or respond 1 Notrump with West bidding, in either situation South will rebid 3 Clubs.   Now North should come alive cuebidding 3 Diamonds to show interest in game.  South assumes the cuebid asks for a stopper in West’s Diamond suit and bids 3 Notrump.   Yet with North’s 1=2=5=5 shape the auction is pulled to 4 Clubs.   With North’s change-up, South cuebids 4 Hearts to show a second round control (Heart King).  With no other controls to show, North rebids 5 Clubs and South ventures a 6 Club slam contract.

On play West begins with the Diamond King, top of broken sequence to South’s Ace.  South surveys the hands, counting 1 Heart loser and potentially a Spade loser.   Playing the Club Ace West shows out so South cashes the Spade Ace and ruffs the Spade Queen in dummy (West wisely ducks the gambit).  Without much thought, South quickly plays a low Heart to West’s Ace (more on this on hand 3b).  Unwilling to continue Diamonds with 5-5 between West and dummy North, West returns a Heart to North’s Queen.  South ruffs a Club in hand, followed a Club ruff in dummy.   After another Diamond ruff in hand and another Spade ruff in dummy, South is happy to see the suit will break 4-3, a 62 percent chance.  Using the required Diamond ruff to return to hand, South can now play their final Club trump however East has one remaining Club to set the contract by one trick.   In retrospect, we can see that a flawed declarer play caused South to go down one trick.  Let’s try another like of play in 3b.

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Click to view video – Polling You 79 Extra 3, Strong Jump Shift

Click to view video – Polling You 79 Extra 3 – Part 2, Strong Jump Shift

Download hand diagram and commentary files

Polling You #79, Extra #3b

South holds a black hand with a 5=2=1=5 shape with 19 High Card Points plus a few more length points.   And while South would like to immediately begin counting Losing Trick Count, the Suit Quality in Spade is only 8, 5 long plus 3 in length (we need a SQ of 9 or more).  Many West’s will overcall 2 Diamonds despite the vulnerability.   South North pass after interference or respond 1 Notrump with West bidding, in either situation South will rebid 3 Clubs.   Now North should come alive cuebidding 3 Diamonds to show interest in game.  South assumes the cuebid asks for a stopper in West’s Diamond suit and bids 3 Notrump.   Yet with North’s 1=2=5=5 shape the auction is pulled to 4 Clubs.   With North’s change-up, South cuebids 4 Hearts to show a second round control (Heart King).  With no other controls to show, North rebids 5 Clubs and South ventures a 6 Club slam contract.

Play through 4 continues as before.  On play West begins with the Diamond King, top of broken sequence to South’s Ace.  South surveys the hands, counting 1 Heart loser and potentially a Spade loser.   Playing the Club Ace West shows out show South cashes the Spade Ace and ruffs the Spade Queen in dummy (West wisely ducks the gambit).   This time South carefully considers play, realizing despite holding a huge hand play requires a Heart entry to the hand.  So the Heart Queen is called from North to West’s Ace, returning a Heart to South’s King.  Now South can win the two remaining Clubs from East’s hand before ruffing a Spade which West must play the final Spade King.  So after ruffing a Diamond in hand, South’s fifth Spade is now a winner to make the 12 trick slam.  Looking at the 5-1 Spade suit, the opponents indeed Spades split 4-3 following the 62 percent odds.

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Strong Jump Shifts, Suit Quality, Losing Trick Count

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Greetings Bridge Friends,

Welcome to  BridgeHands second “Extra” lesson that intercedes our more voluminous, full length episodes.  Again you will have an opportunity to demonstrate your Strong Jump Shift bidding skills as well as some play skills from our prior lessons.

Polling You #79 Extra 2

For better or worse, after South makes a Strong Jump Shift to 3 Clubs the partners wind up playing in a 6 Club contract.

Without looking at the hands, what West card do you suppose would be the killing lead?  Based on the bidding, would East’s play on the first make any difference?  If North held another primary honor instead of the working secondary honors, would that significantly affect their chances to make slam?  And finally, even with perfect “double-dummy” declarer play, if we exchanged the East-West trumps would that influence the outcome?   Inquiring minds must know! [Read more…]

Polling You # 79, Extra #1 Strong Jump Shifts, Suit Quality, Losing Trick Count, Cover Cards

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Greetings Bridge Friends,

With our last five Polling You episodes running close to 3 hours of video each with over a dozen hands, BridgeHands will begin a trial, offering interim “Extra” lessons on a regular basis between our pithy, full length episodes.

Polling You #79 Extra 1a

After North opens 1 Club, as you will recall from our lesson on Suit Quality and Losing Trick Count, South should consider making a Strong Jump Shift.  In this extra episode we will explore the follow-up bidding, defense and learn how to boost your odds when faced with a challenging contract.   After play, we will re-arrange the East-West hands to ensure you are following the best line of declarer play with bad splits.

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Thank you for tuning in to our first extra interim Polling You lesson.   BridgeHands appreciates your interest and support.

Happy Bridge Trails,

BridgeHands

Strong Jump Shifts: Suit Quality, Self-Sustaining Suits, Losing Trick Count

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Greetings Bridge Friends,

Special Note: BridgeHands is committed to keep up with the latest internet industry practices, including the ability to view our videos on mobile and portable devices.  Accordingly, for videos going forward we will be supporting the new “HTML 5” format.  This means for Polling You episodes #79 and beyond, you can watch our videos on your iPhone, iPad, Android or similar devices supporting the latest video standards.

Marching forward with our lessons on Losing Trick Count/Cover Cards and Self-Sustaining Suits/Suit Quality, it’s time to delve into bidding where we have strong hands with unbalanced shape.  Sure, we all love picking up a hand with nearly half the points in the deck, yet it can be a bidding challenge when holding a shapely hand with most of the points in two suits.  So what’s a player to do?  Let’s consider how the strong jump shift can help the opener eloquently describe their hand and drive towards a game contract.  But first, we have a bit of sad news. While our recent three lessons Losing Trick Count and Cover Cards has served us well, we cannot always use LTC/CC hand evaluation criteria to immediately count our winners and losers.  Of course as we’ve previously seen, when you do hold a semi self-sustaining suit then by all means go right ahead and begin using LTC (but use caution when both are minor suits).

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Let’s take a moment for a brief review:

Highlights – Losing Trick Count and Cover Cards

–         Prerequisite: 8+ card trump fit or self-sustaining suit
–         Ace-King-Queen are not losers in 3+ card suits (except Q x x in a side suit)
–         Generally, fourth card and beyond are not losers
–         LTC – CC equals losers, as 6 LTC – 3 CC = 3 losers (major suit game)
–         Extras: 5+4 trump, working Queens and Jacks, shortness

Trump Fit or Self-Sustaining Suit

1. LTC is normally a 5-3 or longer major suit fit
2. Occasionally one player has a long, strong suit
3. We need an independent method to determine the suit quality and LTC when one player has a long, strong suit
4. When evaluating Suit Quality, we generally assume partner may hold a singleton to ascertain the losers (LTC) in a long suit
5. Adjust the above when partner bids Notrump, indicating 2+ card support

Self-Sustaining Suit and Suit Quality

1. Limited to 1 loser when partner holds a singleton
2. Reserved for situations when a player holds a long, strong suit
3. Suit Quality equals the number of useful honors plus the suit length
4. Self-Sustaining Suit usually equals a Suit Quality of 10 or more, lose 0-1 tricks
5. Semi Self-Sustaining Suit equals a Suit Quality of 9, lose 1-2 tricks

Self-Sustaining Suits – Examples where SQ = 10

A K Q x x x x  = 3+ honors + 7 length = 10+
A Q x x x x x x = 2 honors = 8 length = 10
A K Q J x = 4+ honors + 5 length = 9+
K Q J 10 x x = 4 honors (without Ace) + 6 length = 10
Q J 10 9 x x x = 3 honors + 7 length = 10ish (discount 1 missing Ace and King)
J 10 9 8 x x x x = No! Inadequate with primary honors and Queen

Semi Self-Sustaining Suits – Examples where SQ = 9

A Q x x x x x = 2 honors + 7 length = 9
K Q J x x x = 3 honors + 6 length = 9
Q J 10 9 x x = 3 honors + 6 length = 9ish (body card 9 is helpful)
A K Q x x x = 3+ honors + 6 length = 9+ (count extra for top 3 honors in long suit)

Please refer to our Lessons 76 – 78 for more on LTC and Cover Card hand evaluation.

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