Getting Your Priorities Right

[OliverC]

Most relatively easy hands can be distilled into an order of priorities. Sometimes it doesn't matter too much, but others it's absolutely crucial to concentrate on the priorities and not get seduced away into simply taking tricks for the sake of doing do. This hand is a very good case in point:

You are East, Game All, and West was the Dealer.

Bidding
West       North      East      South
1          No           1        X
4          All Pass

South leads the King of Clubs. You're maybe expecting a power-house from Partner, but he puts down:

West (Dummy)
QJ1097
AQJ852
Q5


K led.

East
K8632
K43
97
A85

You can see that even without the friendly Club lead, 10 tricks should be relatively straightforward. You discard one of Dummy's Diamonds and take your Ace of Clubs.

Now STOP!!!! Take a few seconds to think about the hand:

• Winners: Ooodles of winners, thanks to the double-fit in the Majors.
• Losers: Ace of Spades and a Diamond.
• Trumps: No problems with trump solidity, as we're solid from the King right down to the 6.
• Potential Problems: A 3-0 trump split doesn't concern you overmuch, but a 4-0 Heart split would be inconvenient if Opps get a Heart ruff or two in.
• Plan: Draw trumps as quickly as possible, however many rounds it takes. Nothing else matters, because most of our winners are going to come from running the Hearts once we've drawn trumps.

That thought process needn't take more than a couple of seconds. There are some things that are (or should be) absolutely at the very bottom of your list of priorities. Touching the Heart suit and ruffing Clubs are clearly in those categories. Touching the Heart suit is risking the very things that might cause you a problem, and you can ruff Clubs to your heart's content once you've finished drawing trumps. In any case, any Club losers are going to be discarded on Dummy's long Hearts when you run them.

As it turned out the Spades were 3-0. South started with A54, 10, AJ10, KQ10974. Partner didn't stop to think about the hand and just aimlessly started taking tricks. At trick 2 she ruffed a Club in Dummy, crossed back to hand with the King of Hearts (South played the 10) and ruffed another Club in Dummy. Only now did she start drawing trumps. South won the Ace, North showing out and discarding a small Diamond. South could have played a small Diamond to North's King at this point to get a Heart ruff, but instead cashed the Ace of Diamonds and led another Diamond, ruffed by Dummy's penultimate trump. At this point Declarer can still overtake the Queen of Spades with the King, because the 8 and 6 are still "top". Declarer, though, clearly hadn't thought about the solidity of the trumps, because she didn't and left herself stranded in Dummy to lead a Heart for South to ruff.

On this occasion only an overtrick was at stake (1 IMP), but if you don't discipline yourself to stop at trick 1 on every single hand and spend a few seconds thinking about the hand, you will frequently make this kind of mistake when what is at stake is making or not making your contract.

The same thing applies if you're defending: don't just automatically play to trick 1 until you've taken a few seconds to analyse the hand a little, try to figure out what partner has led from, what that means for Declarer's unseen hand, and try to formulate possible lines of attack to allow you to defeat the contract. You may not get a chance to implement that plan until trick 11 and it might even be that the plan won't even become apparent until later in the hand, but Bridge is a thinking game. If you don't take the time to think about what is going on, you will never improve much as a Bridge player.