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I’m posting this a day ahead of the FFEEL session at the club.
We reviewed opening bids in our first FFEEL session a few weeks ago. Since then, we have learned about other topics such as preempts and strong 2-club openers. We were planning to delve into Blackwood and Gerber after noticing that few pairs in our Tuesday session ever bid slams, large or small; perhaps we could score better by recognizing and bidding slams. That is still a goal, but the bidding and card play by all of us in the FFEEL sessions reveals that we need a much firmer grasp of the first round of bidding—opening bids and the first response bids.
Recognizing that some (or all) in a group have not yet mastered the most basic elements of bidding, and circling back to study and practice those elements again, are fundamental to FFEEL. Studying conventions and slam bidding is all well and good, but if you and your partner don’t both know the meanings of basic opening and response bids, nothing else in the subsequent auction has any meaning (to you as a pair) at all.
Given our demonstrated level of play, I am quite surprised that our opponents have not taken to routinely doubling us when we declare, even on what should be eminently makable part score contracts. We routinely come up short on those because we shouldn’t be in them in the first place. Double away, I say! (In fact, in my new partner’s and my first session at the club, we did encounter a pair who, upon seeing us go down 5 in a very randomly-bid 4NT contract, commenced to double us on the next two randomly-bid contracts. I do believe Larry Cohen advocates a “convention” of recognizing and exploiting your opponents’ weaknesses, and I would like to be on the giving end of that one someday, believe you me.)
What I do notice our opponents doing is bidding (and making) contracts that I think they would not bid against better opponents. It’s not every pair, and it’s not systematic, but I often see players raising a suit bid to game level, only to find out when dummy goes down that they only had 4-5 total points and not especially good support for opener’s suit. Based on my admittedly newish understanding, they should expect to make 7 or 8, but certainly not 10, tricks. And yes, I know that sometimes you rely on distribution and not just points when making such bids, but come on—going straight to game with 4-5 points and 3 spot cards in partner’s 1-level opener suit?
What makes them think they can make 10 tricks?
Our demonstrated card play on defense tells them that they can have their way with us more often than not. We have many flaws, but these stand out to me, and if they stand out to me then they really stand out to our experienced opponents:
Random opening leads. Opening leads are laid out plainly on the convention card. I know you can’t consult it while playing, but not all of us consult it at all, at any time. We need to. Some of us do not lead to our partner’s strong suit, even if it was plainly signaled during the auction. If your partner bids and rebids a suit, and the opponents wind up declaring in some other suit, here’s an idea: lead the suit that your partner bid twice!
Random leads other than other opening leads. Same issue. OK, you won a trick and you don’t have a sure winner to lead. What to do. What. To. Do. If only your partner had shown a preference for a suit or suits during the auction—oh wait, if they bid at all, they did show a preference! Go ahead, lead to it!
Disregarding or not using signals during card play. OK, we’re all guilty of this one because—don’t tell anyone—we don’t know carding signals yet! Oh, sure, there are some little notations on the convention card about length and attitude and such things, but in a world where we disregard what our partner bid during the auction, do you think we are tuned into their discards? Not yet, we aren’t. People notice this.
Playing cards that declarer is guaranteed to trump. Your partner is on lead after winning a club against a spade contract. Yay! But dummy played their last club on that trick but still has three trump cards sitting there. Boo! Our clubs might be good later, but not at this moment in time. Welp, time to lead something other than clubs because declarer will surely trump it, right? Right, partner(s)?? RIGHT? GAHHH! Down goes the ace of clubs! Why? Believe me, I’ve done that a lot in my early days. Some of us still do it. We gotta stop!
Switching suits when you have guaranteed winners in your hand. You’re defending against no trump and you are on lead and you have six clubs in your hand and lo and behold, declarer is out and dummy has just two left, and they are both spot cards. You have seen the ace, king, queen, and jack. You have the 10 and the 8. Partner must have the 9! You have two more guaranteed tricks. What to do? I know, play a low diamond against dummy showing the ace and queen of diamonds! Look, I have a terrible memory for cards. I’m working on it, but I really don’t remember if, say, the ace of some side suit has been played. But if you yourself have just played all the face cards in a suit against no trump, that’s a bit easier to notice and remember than the random fall of an honor from someone else’s hand. Work on your memory, but pick the low-hanging fruit first: your own play of four consecutive face cards should loom large in your short-term remembrance. I know this is not automatic for everyone—it certainly wasn’t automatic for me, and so I often abandon sure winners. Let’s work on memory from the easiest cases first.
Leading declarer’s suit. You know, any time I take a moment in between hands to discuss card play with my partner, our opponents almost always weigh in with extremely rare exceptions to the rule I am telling my beginner partner. The exceptions involve math and/or rare scenarios, which are all true and all very correct. But you know what? Let’s let the beginner learn the rule first, and live by it for a year, before introducing the exceptions. And I say, in general, don’t lead to declarer’s trump suit early in the game. They bid it for a reason. Sure, you may have their ace. Why not save it and give them an ugly surprise later in the hand? Maybe snatch the lead at a point where they are out of trumps and you can deploy your long side suit full of previously useless face cards which you can now play all in a row because you are working on noticing that you have all the face cards in that suit and they ran out so, like, keep playing it, right? Please??
I have done all of the above to my partners, and I have had partners do all of the above to me. I would bid game freely against us too, if I were a good player! Oh, and when we declare, I would double the heck out of us. No hard feelings, it’s the game.
I know all of that looks like a rant, but it does have a point: this week’s “worksheet” is actually just our results from 04/09/24. It shows numerous examples of our chaotic bidding and woeful carding. We will spend the 04/11/24 FFEEL session replaying many of those boards double-dummy style, with a focus on the opening bid and the first response bid.
The FFEEL worksheet for 04/11/2024.
The Common Game boards for 04/09/2024.
If you’re ever in Anniston, AL at 10:30AM on a Thursday, swing by the bridge club and hang out with us.