[plaur]

How do you practice card combinations?

I mean the easier ones. Not those that experts debate or those that come down to a few percentages, but stuff like this:

trumps
AJ96x
87xx

Play the ace and then small towards J
When they are 2-2 doesnt matter
When 3-1 only looses to single T behind. Single H behind is twice as likely.

[analysismi]

Get William S. Root's How to Play a Bridge Hand. He has an equally good book about defending.

[plaur]

analysismi, on Jul 11 2008, 06:23 AM, said:

Get William S. Root's How to Play a Bridge Hand. He has an equally good book about defending.

Quote: "Before tacking how to play a bridge hand, it is appropriate to study how to play a single suit.." I like that so ill buy em both. Last time I bought a book an amazon.com it took 6 weeks to arrive so ill try to find a seller in Europe.

[dburn]

plaur, on Jul 11 2008, 06:06 AM, said:

How do you practice card combinations?

I mean the easier ones. Not those that experts debate or those that come down to a few percentages, but stuff like this:

trumps
AJ96x
87xx

Play the ace and then small towards J
When they are 2-2 doesnt matter
When 3-1 only looses to single T behind. Single H behind is twice as likely.

Well, that is not quite the best way to play this particular combination (you should in fact run the eight if it is not covered). But I cannot tell from your post whether you are offering advice or asking for it.

[Sambolino]

if one has a little time it could be analyzed like this (i prefer to buy a book tho and remember what's right )

what we got here is

16 combinations - 6.25% per combination

3-1 - 8 combinations 50%

QTx K
KTx Q
KQx T
KQT x
and vice versa

2-2 6 37.5%

KQ Tx
KT Qx
Kx QT
QT Kx
Qx KT
Tx KQ

4-0 2 12.5%

let's consider 4 plays - Ace; finesse 9 and then J; finesse 0 then A; and finesse J

what never matters is:
4-0 on right, all 22's except KQ sec on right and half of 3-1's which is 62.5%
6 combinations are left and they are to determine the best play

QTx K
KTx Q
KQx T
KQT x
Tx KQ
KQTx

A wins :

QTx K
KTx Q
Tx KQ

fin9 then J wins:

QTx K
KTx Q
KQT x
KQTx

fin J wins:

KQx
KQT
Tx KQ

so seems like #2 is best (i'm in a rush so may've missed something, just wanted to show the principle)

[y66]

Starting with a book on play that covers basic, high frequency suit combinations, as recommended by analysismi, is a good strategy. Maybe xerox the relevant pages so you can take them with you on the subway or read them in boring classes or boring business meetings. That Bill Root book is heavy!

When you're ready for the graduate level course, you can try taking a page out of Sheri Winestock's book:

This is a daunting task. I tried this once but didn't get very far. I like to use the EOB as a reference though.

The BridgeMaster software covers some basic suit combinations. This is a fun way to practice. Sheri's husband wrote this software.

p.s. While you're waiting for your book on play to arrive, checkout Richard Pavlicek's stuff on combinations.

[plaur]

dburn, on Jul 11 2008, 06:49 AM, said:

plaur, on Jul 11 2008, 06:06 AM, said:

How do you practice card combinations?

I mean the easier ones. Not those that experts debate or those that come down to a few percentages, but stuff like this:

trumps
AJ96x
87xx

Play the ace and then small towards J
When they are 2-2 doesnt matter
When 3-1 only looses to single T behind. Single H behind is twice as likely.

Well, that is not quite the best way to play this particular combination (you should in fact run the eight if it is not covered). But I cannot tell from your post whether you are offering advice or asking for it.

I foolishly thought I knew how to play it. Now I need pen and paper (using the backside of an envelope with a letter that tells me the company I work for has just been taken over by an equity fond!)

trumps
AJ96x
87xx
Examing two plans:
1) Ace and then small towards J
2) run 8 if not covered

Plans are equal except two combinations:
KQT - x
KQTx - void

plan 1 : 4 tricks 50%, 3 tricks 43.75%, 2 tricks 6.25%
plan 2 : 4 tricks 62,5%, 3 tricks 31.25%, 2 tricks 6.25%

Is this correct?

[sceptic]

plaur, on Jul 11 2008, 11:06 AM, said:

How do you practice card combinations?

I mean the easier ones. Not those that experts debate or those that come down to a few percentages, but stuff like this:

trumps
AJ96x
87xx

Play the ace and then small towards J
When they are 2-2 doesnt matter
When 3-1 only looses to single T behind. Single H behind is twice as likely.

get truscotts flash cards they are fun

[fred]

plaur, on Jul 11 2008, 01:23 PM, said:

trumps
AJ96x
87xx
Examing two plans:
1) Ace and then small towards J
2) run 8 if not covered

Plans are equal except two combinations:
KQT - x
KQTx - void

plan 1 : 4 tricks 50%, 3 tricks 43.75%, 2 tricks 6.25%
plan 2 : 4 tricks 62,5%, 3 tricks 31.25%, 2 tricks 6.25%

Is this correct?

Close to being correct, but not correct. You forgot about:

10x KQ

If you finesse the 8 first and it loses to the K or Q, you have to decide what to do next. It is easy to see that finessing again is best, losing to the layout above but gaining when RHO was dealt a singleton King or Queen.

Trying to memorize how to play combinations that come up frequently (I would put this combination in that category) is a good idea. But for most people it is not practical to try to memorize anywhere close to all the combinations that you might run into on a given day.

So it is useful to be able to figure these things out in your head at the table. However, there is a big difference between "useful" and "important". I believe that many "world class players" are either incapable of doing this or are too lazy to try when they are actually playing. Apparently these people are highly successful even though they suck when it comes to suit combinations so apparently being good at suit combinations is not a necessary condition for success even at the highest levels of bridge.

The key to being able to figure these things out in your head is to be able to quickly separate the wheat from the chaff. That means quickly identifying the small number of lines that are worthy of consideration, ignoring other lines, and being able to quickly enumate the holdings that are relevant when comparing these lines. Once you get that far, it is usually easy to see which line is best without doing any real math at all.

The best (only?) way to acquire this skill is to practice!

I write a monthly column in The Bridge World magazine that (I hope!) is useful practice for suit combinations. Each month a new suit combination is presented along with a description of the thinking process that you can use to come up with the answer to the previous month's problem.

Aside from my column (actually my name does not appear - the suit combination of the month is part of what looks like an ad for BBO), The Bridge World has plenty of other great content. If you are serious about bridge then you should definitely subscribe even if you don't care about suit combinations!

But you really don't need my column or any book to practice. Just think of suit combinations and try to work out the answer. At first you might find that your thinking process is all muddled up, but the more you practice the better you will get

There is a brilliant computer program called Suitplay that is capable of analyzing any suit combination. I suggest you use this program only if you think you have figured out the right answer (and want to check) or if you are sure you can't figure out the right answer.

IMO relying on Suitplay in other situations will turn your brain into a vegtable as far as these things are concerned. IMO the same is true of double dummy solving programs. If you rely heavily on these programs for analysis, you will never develop the skills to figure these things out for yourself.

Fred Gitelman
Bridge Base Inc.
www.bridgebase.com

[Mbodell]

fred, on Jul 11 2008, 06:42 AM, said:

So it is useful to be able to figure these things out in your head at the table. However, there is a big difference between "useful" and "important". I believe that many "world class players" are either incapable of doing this or are too lazy to try when they are actually playing. Apparently these people are highly successful even though they suck when it comes to suit combinations so apparently being good at suit combinations is not a necessary condition for success even at the highest levels of bridge.

The key to being able to figure these things out in your head is to be able to quickly separate the wheat from the chaff. That means quickly identifying the small number of lines that are worthy of consideration, ignoring other lines, and being able to quickly enumate the holdings that are relevant when comparing these lines. Once you get that far, it is usually easy to see which line is best without doing any real math at all.

The best (only?) way to acquire this skill is to practice!

One reason why I think this is a good idea (even though I'm only at the very beginning of this process) and one reason why it may only be "useful" and not "necessary" to memorize this stuff even at the World Class level is that all of these suit combinations that you would memorize assume that you have infinite transportation, no preference which opponent gets on lead, and no hints or ability to generate hints about possible opponents hands. In the real bridge hand you may have inferences from the bidding or the play or the ability to run some other suit first and get clues of the layout before you have to play on this suit. Or you may be willing to let LHO get on lead but not RHO. Or if this is trump you may want to cash the A first because you are worried about an outside ruff and willing to pay off to some distributions if you lose the second trump trick and not the first one.

If you can work out the right lines at the table and know that the line 2 above is correct largely because KQ combinations, but know from the bidding that one opponent might need to have at least one of the two cards for the points for their bid then you know that some of the normal layouts that certain strategies cater to are not relevant to this hand.

Even though Fred didn't put in a plug for his software, let me strongly recommend Bridge Master 2000 for improving your declarer play. Assuming I'm not exhausted I've been trying to do one problem from each of the 5 levels each night. And even when I fail on some of the problems I try again to solve it myself, even if it takes a while (and for a player of my ability those level 5 problems often do take a while and several tries), before seeing the movie. And even when I solve the problem myself on the first time, I try to watch the movie to make sure that my line of play was right for the right reasons and that I wasn't forgetting some other reason why that should be right.