Bridge questions
For member bridge questions - and their answers...
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AG asked: "How do you count losers and why would you want to?"
"Counting losers" comes up in at least two different contexts. The one I hope you have heard of is as part of a declarer planning how she will play the hand, particularly in suit contracts. For example playing in 4H you may look at your hand and dummy and see:
AG said: "With a Take-Out Double, I was playing with someone on Saturday who was using it to indicate that the player to their right had stolen their bid. This would indicate that they have lots of the bid suit, but I understood that the Take-Out Double indicated that you had nothing in the bid suit but an opening hand and cover in the other suits. Surely, both can’t be right ?"
Here we go:
TH asked: When a responder changes suit, it is forcing on opener to rebid. However what happens if opener’s rebid changes the suit again? Is this forcing on responder to bid again?
An opener's change to a new suit that is not a jump bid or higher ranking than their first bid (eg 1H - 1S - 2C) is not normally forcing when the responder has changed suit at the one level. It may indicate a two-suited minimum or medium range opening hand (13-18 points) and a responder with minimum (6-7) points may pass with a better fit in the second suit.
TH asked: When you are declarer in a suit contract, you count your losers, then work out a plan to achieve your contract. (In a no-trump contract, you count your winners.) What is the best way to count your losers? Is there a quick way to do this? Or is it just practice?
When you are planning your hands as declarer you can be fairly precise as you can look at both dummy's and declarer's holdings.
This is a hand from our SALT4 match on Monday night. It doesn’t get much worse. This was the first hand of the second match, a disappointing 1 point hand.
Terry H asked: When assessing your hand to open, you need 12+ opening points to open one of a suit, provided you have 5 or more cards in a major suit, or less for minors. Opening points are a combination of HCPs and length points. Length points are one point for a 5 card suit, two points for a 6 card suit etc. Then, when you find a fit with partner you can include shortage points (1 for a doubleton, 3 for a singleton and 5 for a void).
This raises 4 questions on points:
DC asked: My partner opened 1C (with two plus clubs) and I'm holding 4 hearts to the king, 4 clubs to the queen, 4 diamonds to the queen and a singleton spade, what would your response be?
I bid 1D, she said 2NT so I went 3NT and we made 7...
PG responded: Despite the most accurate bidding, you need to expect some hands not to make. Bidding systems cover the majority of hands not all of them.
