All News

for Junior, Intermediate or Novice players..and others. It's Fri Day!

A Confused Message.

I wonder if the problem highlighted by today’s deal is a system failure or just laziness. You be the judge though firstly you have a question to answer:

 

A combination of adverse vulnerability and the comparative flatness of your hand made you nervous about bidding on to 4. So, as East, you pass out 4. Your partner leads A. Using your system, which card do you play to the first trick? Would it make any difference if your partner had led K? You are playing Pairs.

When we start playing the game, we just follow suit when partner leads a high card. Then, we learn about encouraging and the reverse. We also learn that with a doubleton, we can show partner we have only 2 cards in the suit and would like a ruff, please, on the third round.

We may learn natural signals (“high” then “low”) with a doubleton or high to encourage partner first up or “reverse signals” which are the exact opposite of natural. Then, it gets hard!

Well, it must do since when the above deal occurred, only 3 out of 16 East-West pairs managed to take 3 tricks against a heart contract. Most were defending 4 though playing Pairs, it was just as important to take 3 tricks as it was for the 6 pairs defending 5.

 

East or West could get a good score by bidding on to 4 as, even doubled, this contract is just one down (-100 or – 200) whereas 5 can be defeated, and was three times. However, -420 would still have been an excellent result for East-West but was not achieved anywhere.

West would lead a high club and play two more clubs. South ruffed, drew trumps and played four rounds of diamonds, discarding their spade, +450.

That should not happen. Playing natural signals, East plays 5, then 6 and West knows East has another club because they would play their high club first with a doubleton. The spade suit, which surely had been bid by the defenders, is the obvious switch.

With reverse signals, East plays 8, then 5 (make your signals as clear to partner as you can) and then West switches to a spade. Some may even lead K at trick 1. This card specifically asks their partner to show how many clubs they have, an odd or an even number. There should be no slip-up.

Yet, there was, 13 times! Why?

In some cases, West perhaps was not watching their partner’s carding…or 3 rounds of clubs just seems too easy! Yet, I suspect a confusion in defensive system might be partly to blame.

 

It would seem that natural or reverse signals should enable West to switch to a spade after two rounds of clubs. Yet, some pairs play reverse attitude (encouragement) and natural count. On the lead of the ace, East has a bit of a problem. They want to discourage but they way they do so is to play a high club and then a lower club….and yet playing natural count, that shows a doubleton. East does not know that West has the Q as well, or else they could play a low club at trick 1, if that helps. Yet, if West thinks their partner has a doubleton club, they will certainly try a third round…and therefore declarer makes the rest of the tricks.

The mixture may work for some pairs though for me, it creates confusion and may have contributed to the lack of 420s on the score-sheet. Where you have bid the suit, playing the king on the opening lead asking partner to give count in the suit would help the problem.

There certainly was a problem in that so many West players played three rounds of clubs, to their cost. Natural or reverse..no matter which, but not a mixture.

 

Richard Solomon

 

Go Back View All News Items