Bridge: PG Tips

12 January

Part 1
by David Burn

The Editor of Young Bridge, Sally Brock, has recently edited the Complete BOLS Book of Bridge Tips. I am pleased to announce that the book is shortly to be made into a film, though since some of the material is not considered suitable for unaccompanied young players, it will be released under the title of "PG Tips". Essential reading though this work is for any aspiring junior, I was disappointed to observe that -- doubtless due to nepotism and intrigue -- it contained none of my own invaluable hints for the would-be expert. As a service to the youth of Britain, I present them below.

I was South on this hand from a recent duplicate:

			K943
			AQ
			K4
			A9653
	652				AJ8
	K9853				1062
	A105				86
	104				KJ872
			Q107
			J74
			QJ9732
			Q

South	West	North	East
Pass	Pass	1	Pass
1	Pass	1	Pass
2	Pass	Pass	Pass

West led a heart, won by the queen. The early play was more or less routine -- ace of hearts, ace of clubs, club ruff, heart ruff, king of diamonds.  West won this with the ace and led a fourth round of hearts, in the hope that East could ruff with something useful, but the eight was not quite good enough. I overruffed it with the nine and drew trumps, on one of which East discarded the eight of spades! I was thus able to avoid losing a trick to the J -- something I could not have done by orthodox means as I no longer had an entry to dummy -- and 150 was a fine score. East apologised, explaining that because the early play had exhausted him of red cards, he had got his black ones mixed up, and discarded the wrong eight. I had given no thought to this earlier in the hand, but I was now able to formulate a new BOLS Tip:  

In the early stages of a hand, always play on two suits of the same colour. This maximises the chance that an opponent will mis-sort his cards in the later play.

This leads to an important defensive corollary:
When you win a trick, always switch to a suit of a different colour from those on which declarer is playing.
  If West had been aware of this principle, he would have played a spade after winning the A, enabling East to promote the 10 with a third round of clubs. Of course, this would have cost the defence a potential spade trick, but since they didn't make this trick anyway, the sacrifice would have been worth while.