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A good player hates to make guesses yet he must make them constantly. The end results quite often are indicative of who guessed correctly. Is that really true? I don't really believe it is. Actually it is the costly guesses that ruin us. We can make mistakes all day long as long as the results are not costly. This is one reason why post-mortems tend to be over costly sets or nils that failed. Better players like to sort and catalog data as a hand is being played noting hesitations in play, signals, and general clues from suits played vs. ones that seem to be avoided. As the hand progresses we find ourselves in a good position to make intelligent guesses. However, cases do occur when the evidence is not readily available and we must be ready to put on our night glasses so we can see what is lurking in the darkness. Instead of gloom and doom some of the greatest players have virtually seen the light very early on when clues were simply not readily available. Did they really though? Do they possess some inner ability that takes the art of card reading to a new realm? Now there is a buzzword, "card-reading!" All of the greats possess it, sometimes referred to as table presence. Sometimes it is nothing more than a strong hunch regarding who has some specific card. Quite often however it is much more. It's the Sherlock Holmes mindset, or for television buffs, a Columbo/Quincy deductive reasoning. Possibly it is the thought process that considers things from an improbable viewpoint instead of an impossible one. Place yourself in the East position and see if you can see the light. The score is N/S 412 and E/W 405. This hand was taken from a recent tourney and visionary tactics were missed. South bids 7, West bids 1, North bids 2 for the game. You hold the following hand: East: Things are not looking very promising at this point but you make the only bid that gives you any chance, a 4-bid, as you must set the opps if you intend to win this game. Partner leads the King of hearts and you signal your interest in this suit by playing
the Are you really sure???? Ok, you take the Ace and South drops the ten of diamonds. Now what? Pause again now friend……………..Don't rush the play so fast. Where are the setting tricks coming from? Try to deduce why partner shifted? Ok, what if partner made the inspired lead of a singleton King of hearts? What can we now do that gives us any chance at all? Think… Think… Think… Think… What, a low heart back? Are you nuts? Why would you do that? Well, well, you are dead on my friend and maybe you can see in the dark after all. If you correctly deduce that partner has indeed led the singleton King of hearts then hopefully you came to the conclusion that leading the Ace must be wrong. You need to score the Ace and Jack of hearts if you intend to set this one and I must admit chances are slim indeed. Well that low heart you lead back does in fact get trumped by partner. Way to go, woo-hoo! Partner returns a small club and North takes the Ace and leads the 3 of spades. I hope you discard correctly now after South plays 6 spades. AKQJ97. Remember your original plan of attack! Have you figured out just how badly a heart return earlier in this hand would have been? By the way, this is what the folks did in the game I was playing in and I pitched a dime holding the South hand. The hand was:
Regards, | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
754 
AJ72
A943 
KJ