Stop a moment and think!

No, I do not think South should bid game here, although he can make 5♠. I am posting this here, because beginners will make only 10 tricks. You always have to think twice and try to get a better result. I am also guilty of this mistake too often.

The lead is ♣K, which you take by ♣A with the conclusion that is was singleton. Consequently the clubs do not split and you lose one trick if you just play them. Moreover, it is too dangerous to make any finesse in spades. You are rewarded with a splitting trump suit. At that point, you should think on how to avoid the loser in clubs. 

It is not difficult once you give the hand a little bit of thought. If the ♦A is with East, you get two discards in diamonds after East covers with the ♦A. Then ruff one club to establish the suit. If East does not cover, you have one loser less anyway.

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Never give up!

This is an instructional hand to remind players not to give up. All expert will solve it easily. But I would guess that most club players struggle.

• West leads a club, and the ♣Q holds the trick. Personally, I am no longer convinced that those positive leads under queens and kings are good in the long run. Of course, they might establish a trick which is otherwise discarded, maybe even two. Two often, they just give away a trick to declarer. In this hand, it does not matter, because clubs can be discarded on the spades anyway, as the cards lay.
• There is not much in terms of trick counting here. You have to draw trumps. The only chance is to play low towards ♥A. To your surprise, West drops the ♥K.
• Consequently, East has ♥JT9 now, which cannot be finessed. You lose two more tricks, don't you? But this is pairs, and we want to get every overtrick we can for a top score. Now is your chance to think about this problem!
• You solved it, of course! Your only chance to not lose two trump tricks is when East plays a low trump into the finesse. He (or she, as always) would have to if you play a low trump to him and he has only ♥JT left.
• The first plan is to collect all tricks, after driving out the ♦A, and trump the last spade on the table when there is nothing but the three trumps on the table, then play a low trump. 
• Check, if this line of play might actually endanger the contract! What can happen? Well, East might be able to ruff any diamond. This can easily happen in diamonds. In fact it is very likely to happen. How can we prevent this, or at least make it less likely?
• We need to ruff the last diamond at the table, not the last spade. Thus, we discard a diamond on the spades first, before cashing the diamonds. Good.
• But can it cost a trick? No, that is no problem. If East ruffs, he gets another trump trick, and we still make the contract, as if we hadn't followed the plan above. 

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How to approach a Bridge hand as declarer?

There are some hints which I found helpful.

• Scan through all suits first, adding the number of cards you have in combined hands, computing the number of cards the opponents hold and the possible or likely distributions. You can take into account what you know from the bidding or the lead. This helps to know what's going on later in the game by anchoring details in your memory.
• After you have done this, count your tricks and also your losers. If that does not add up to 13, find out why. In some hands, counting the losers is good enough because you have more winners than you need. In this case, see how to avoid some of the losers. In other hands, the winners are more important, because you lose tricks that you cannot predict after giving control to the opponents.
• Then plan your play as good as you can at this moment. It is, of course, best to plan for all eventual distributions, but often too difficult. Experience will teach you to simplify the plan as much as possible. I cannot delve into the problems that you might face any deeper here. Bridge is not an easy game.
• Then, see what can go wrong with your plan. Did you assume a replay that might not happen? Did you forget to score extra tricks by ruffing? Other problems?

The following hand serves as a demonstration.

After that involved bidding, you reach a slam in diamonds. You see the lead of a small heart. Now check your suits first.

• You have 5 spades with three top winners. The opponents are likely to have 5:3 or 4:4. Of course, 6:2 is also possible, but more rare.
• You have 6 hearts with 2 top winners. Opponents are likely 4:4 or 5:2.
• You have only an 8-card fit in your trump suit. Most likely, you get 4 tricks there. If the finesse works, you get 5. Opponents are likely 3:2 or more rarely 4:1. Mentally note that there is a finesse which could cause one loser.
• You have 7 clubs with 3 sure winners, even if the finesse fails. Mentally note again, that the finesse could cause one loser.

If you add everything up, you have 3+2+4+3=12 sure tricks. But you need to do two finesses and that might cause two losers. The chances for both finesses to fail is only 1/4, however. That does not mean that you get an extra winner. You still have a loser if one finesse fails, and your winners fall together.

Now, let us plane the game. It sounds easy. We take the lead in North and make the trump finesse. if it fails, we take the finesse in clubs. But, wait! We have no entry to the table to do that. That also prevents us from cashing ♠AKQ. We need to rethink our plan and find one that works.

It is more helpful to think of losers here. You have two small diamonds and two small clubs. You can discard three of them on your spades. Now, you get the idea to trump another one at the table. You find out that you can do all of that after a little bit of pondering. Take the lead at the table, discard two clubs and one heart right away on your top spades, and make the trump finesse now. If it holds, you can cash another trump for more safety, play the ♥K, and ruff a heart at the table with the remaining trump. In this hand East can overruff. But that does not matter. The rest is yours.

What can go wrong? The spades might distribute 6:2. There is no cure against that, you find. You might be able to overruff if the double is at East. But at that point, you have no entry to the table. The trumps might be 4:1 with West. Then you lose two trump tricks no matter what you do.

My main point of all this is, that things are much easier if you first scan the hand, the winners and the losers. Then make a plan. It is much easier to stay connected to the table if you already anchored the possible distributions in your brain.

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The 5-Level

The 5-level belongs to the opponent, they say. Overbidding at this level means chaos. Often, minute changes in the distribution decide between top and flop. 

In teams, the outcome of one board at the 5-level can decide the match. The worst switch is that both sides can make their contract. If in doubt, it is therefore better to defend on the 5-level. If both sides cannot make the contract, the difference can be substantial, but not disastrous. If your opponents can make their contract, you need a lot of fullers to be worse. And if both sides can make, you have decided the match.

In pairs, these contracts are usually simply top or zero at a 50% probability. You can decide by your defense tricks. If you do not have many and are in doubt that you can make your contract, pass.

This is from a pairs event. It is quite natural to block with 5♦ here. In fact, 3NT is the better contract with 10 top tricks for +630 instead of +600, making even if West does not have ♣A. But I have no idea how to produce a chance to find it. 

The LAW and reason clearly says that 5♥ should not be bid. Points are even between the sides. But there are only 9 sure trumps in hearts which forbids this defense. The 5-level is for the opponent. In fact, however, it is a good defense if you can manage to go down only twice. South has not much of safe defense tricks. So, it might be an idea to defend.

If you want to play this hand, open the BBO hand viewer here. 

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How to improve in Bridge?

Here is my list:

• Practice.
• Practice more.
• Concentrate.
• Read the hands of opponents and partners.
• Study your mistakes as well as your lucky results.
• Be proud of the things you did correctly.

I was never good at concentration, I am afraid. It gets easier with experience. But I often make completely avoidable mistakes only because I did not think twice and put down a card in an automatic and relaxed manner. "It will be okay" is not the right attitude.

The error handling is another part of improving. Underserved good results happen. Too often they are due to mistakes of the opponents. And getting lucky after a bad play is nothing you should be proud. Neither should you feel depressed by your mistakes, nor ignore them. Just recognize them and remember. But, for sure, be proud of the decisions you made intentionally and that saved the day.  Keep your mood positive at all times.

Practicing is now so easy in the net. However, at some level it is better to play as many tournaments against humans as possible.

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The state of Bridge in Germany

Main points:

• Bridge is a social game and should be played in clubs.
• In Germany, the game is in an awful and poor situation.
• Bridge should be a friendly and intellectual challenge, not a set of rules to be learned.
• The Forum D system is not open enough, and not international.
• Clubs should enforce changes in partnerships with strong players open for new players.

Bridge is a social game first of all. Thus the only place to start it as a satisfying hobby is the club. There, you can meet other enthusiasts, prove yourself in tournaments, and have social interaction aside the game. It is also the best place to learn from other players. My clear advice is that you should, if at all possible, get in contact with your local Bridge community.  

The many Bridge servers cannot fully substitute for a personal interaction. You will usually play with robots, unless your partner from the club is ready and able to join you on the server. You will be compared to other players, but it feels quite anonymous. I think the servers could do more to enhance the interaction between players, allowing to leave comments, for instance, or to open more public forums. As it is, it is a great way to practice the game, but its just a solitaire way to spend time and exercise the brain.

Unfortunately, Bridge in Germany is in a bad state. The statistics speaks a clear language. Bridge is almost exclusively a sport for the elderly with an average age around 75. This is an incredible and saddening development. Consequently and by nature, the number of players has reduced to half of what it was even 15 years ago. Nobody plays Bridge or meets the game somewhere in public. It is just widely unknown, or misunderstood as a game for elderly ladies.

The German Bridge Association (DBV - Deutscher Bridgeverband) sees this development with great concern. They try to do whatever possible to make Bridge more visible and attract young players. But the results seem to be limited yet. Internationally, German Bridge has never been top notch. Not that international tournaments in an outsider game would be widely recognized in the public, but more international success would help young German players to see some light. The effect of top players on the attraction of the game cannot be underestimated.

But how do clubs cope with this development on the local level? They do offer bridge courses and lessons and often invite to them in local newspapers. The way that these classes are done is not optimal, however. The participants are overwhelmed by lots of things to learn and grasp. Not only do they need some basic understanding of tricks and how to develop them or prevent them in defense, but they also have to learn conventions and bidding strategies. Add the usual age of the participants, many beyond retirement, and the dropout will be huge.

Moreover, an antique system is tought in the classes, called Forum D. That is a local version of the American Standard System, adapted from the French standard. I think that  a modern system like 2/1 would be more easily accessible and more helpful on the international level. But the main problem of Forum D is the bad documentation. The little substantial material about this system is under Copyright, including the teaching sheets. The first thing to do is to switch to an open and internationally accepted bidding system, with free learning and training material. Overwhelming the beginner with three consecutive books on bidding and a costly introduction class is the wrong way.

In general, my idea about this game is that it should be an open and friendly intellectual challenge. I whished there was much less competition at the start and much less learning. Bridge can be enjoyed outside club tournaments with some modified Rubber rules by four players only. That is the right way to learn the game, meeting, having fun and simply playing. The DBV itself asks clubs to offer startup tournaments with relaxed rules. That is good. 

Another topic that needs to be changed are the fixed partnerships that never change. Instead, weaker players should play with stronger ones, and outsiders should always find a good partner. Club players should be aware that winning an evening tournament isn't such a huge accomplishment. But bringing someone into Bridge is.

In subsequent posts, I am going to add some more thoughts into that problem. I think there are many things that can be done to improve the attraction of the game, and to make it more fun for all of us. I have to push aside my own frustration and always stay optimistic along the way.

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