Inspired Declarer Play
My experience in playing with bridge students is that when dummy comes down they just aren’t sure what to do. Readers of my blogs will know that when they are in a suit contract my rules are:
a) count losers and make a plan and b) is there a reason NOT to draw trump. If you don’t have one then get those kittys off the street.
But still I can tell that it is often hard to decide what to do. For many players playing a hand is a high point. They should feel comfortable. Julian Laderman’s new book will give them the inspiration they need to play the dummy. A Bridge to Inspired Declarer Play has just won the ABTA (American Bridge Teachers’ Association) Bridge Book of the year.
Julian is two for two having also won for his previous book A Bridge To Simple Squeezes also won the award.
Why are Julian’s books so very well received? Why did every book seller at the recent Washington Nationals sell out requiring us to overnight another carton of books? First Julian, a math professor at a New York university, is a wonderful ambassador for his books. He has a way of making concepts simple and easy to understand. (I wish I had been his student when I was studying math!)
In a bridge to inspired declarer play each hand is presented as a problem. Julian than provides a solution which not only explains what to do on this hand but illustrates a particular play point. He shows you how you can recognize this type of play approach when it occurs at the table. Finally he shows you how if the hand was a little bit different you might have to adapt how you played it.
Here is an example:
| ♠ Q1092 |
| ♥ J75 |
| ♦ 976 |
| ♣ K103 |
| ♠ AKJ873 |
| ♥ 432 |
| ♦ A |
| ♣ AJ2 |
You are in 4♠ with no opposition bidding and the openly lead is the ♦K. With three hearts to lose you will need to find the queen of clubs to make the contract. Julian asks the question: “How do you find it?”
When you get to the answers you find out that this is a trick question. You don’t have to find it you can let the opponents find it for you. In order to do that you want to make it impossible for the opponents to exit safely when they get the lead. This is called the elimination. If you had no diamonds left and you drew trump the opponents would not be able to exit with a trump (they have none) or a diamond since that will give you a ruff and sluff. So you start by playing a trump to dummy and ruffing a diamond. Then you play another trump to diamond and ruff the last diamond. You will have arrived at this position:
| ♠ 109 |
| ♥ J75 |
| ♦ — |
| ♣ K103 |
| ♠ AK |
| ♥ 432 |
| ♦ |
| ♣ AJ2 |
At this point you have finished the elimination and you are ready to perform the endplay. You now lead a heart. The opponents can take three heart tricks but then they have to lead a club. Whichever opponent leads a club you can just play low and the queen will be found. You have just performed a sophisticated bridge play called a strip and endplay. (Sounds a bit sexy to me).
Julian explains how you can recognize this situation with a few simple rules. He also asks you an interesting question. Suppose you had the queen of clubs instead of the jack. Can find a way that the strip and endplay would allow you to take another trick anyway? Think about what the other two hands would have to be for this to work.
I promise you if you read this book Julian will not only teach you something but make you think. This is a worthy award winner.