Tips for Better Bridge
Attitude
You won't get better by collecting lots of conventions, nor by blindly following rules, nor by learning complicated declarer techniques. Bridge is a game of thinking and good judgement, and the brain is lazy. It likes to go for automatisms instead of keeping awake and concentrated. Every board is different and needs some rethinking. Some problems repeat, but most of the time in a different context.
This is a page of ideas I found and was taught over the years on the things that really matter in Bridge. Unfortunately, or luckily, it is not easy. We start with some hints on general attitude in Bridge, and follow with some hints about bidding.
The following summary is detailed in the sections below. Examples follow at the end.
- Get an overview before you start! From all the information you have, make a mental picture of all hands in the board. Even if you are not right, it helps to anchor your memory, and guides your plan.
- Never play in auto mode! In each step, think about what you are doing and why. Consider alternatives all the time.
- Deal correctly with your mistakes! Do not be contempt with learning what the correct play would have been, but also where and why you failed.
- Stay in a winner mode! If things go wrong, stay calm and cool. Getting into a loser mode is a sure way to actually lose.
- Bid rational, not for excitement! Part scores can bring tops too, especially in pairs.
Get an overview before you start!
This is a trick to anchor the card layout into your brain. As declarer, simply go through the suits and check the missing cards, their number and values. Make a mental picture of the cards of the opponents. Even if you are not 100% correct, it will help you later in the game to remember correctly what happened. And it will help you forming a plan.
As defender, you also see two hands. So you can apply the same technique after you see the table. You almost always have an additional information from the bidding, usually more than the declarer has from your side.
In Bridge, you often have to guess, looking for the best chance. Even a nebulous overview of all hands will help you with those decisions.
Never play in auto mode!
It happens to all of us, especially at the end of a long evening in the club. You think the contract is easy and plays itself, and all of a sudden you lost the transition to the table, or opponents play something unexpected spoiling your plan, or a suit does not brake well and you fall apart, or you could have made an overtrick but did not notice, or you simply forgot what happened in the diamond suit.
If you play a hand, take your time to rethink your options, your plan, and the hazards you might face at each step. Do not play automatically with the mindset that everything should go well. The brain is lazy because it consumes energy and your body likes to preserve energy. Keep it busy and on track.
A good method to stop the auto mode from kicking in is to hesitate one or two seconds before every card, more if necessary, and remind yourself of what you are doing and why.
Do not overlook alternatives to your plan, following it blindly in auto mode. In fact, at each step of the play you should check if another option would not be better or safer.
Deal correctly with your mistakes!
You will make mistakes. We tend to ask the wrong question then. While it might be interesting to learn what you should have done instead, it is more important to know where the mistake happened and why. You should try to find out where your thought process failed, or at what point you did not think enough, or not at all. Of course, we make wrong guesses too. But only if we are aware that we guessed and why we guessed that way, we are on the right track.
After we learn the correct way to play a hand, we tend to think we will do better next time. We won't. Only if we know where we stopped thinking hard enough and why, we can improve.
Check your winning games too if you have the time. Often, you just were lucky and did not even notice the danger of your careless play. Often will you discover a safer play or an even better result. Studying the results in this manner will help you improve.
Stay in a winner mode!
Do not let yourself drawn down by a mishap or bad luck. Getting a loser attitude is a sure way of actually losing. Don't tell your partner that today everything goes wrong, and you see no chance. Stay cool! If you have time to ponder about your results, think of where the problem started and why. Maybe you were distracted or tired. Fix that mental problem instead of adding another one.
If your partner makes silly mistakes, there is nothing you can do about it at the table besides calmly asking what happened. Most likely, he noticed the problem already. There is no point in explaining the correct play between boards, unless your partner asks. Treating mistakes in a constructive way is one important factor in good partnership. If you disagree about a bidding, you probably need a bit of time together after the tournament.
In any case, do not get into berserker mode to compensate the bad results. On the other hand, don't get lazy and settle on mediocre results. Keep your head up!
Bid rational, not for excitement!
Some players have extraordinary fun and excitement in bidding games or slams, and get mad if a bonus is missed. Your mindset should rather be that you feel like cheating if you bid a game and make it only by luck. You should learn to feel better if you stopped correctly below game. At least, do not bid slams just to see if today is your lucky day. Bridge should be a game more of skill and and good judgement than of luck. You should start to feel ashamed for being irrational and greedy all the time.
It is not always possible to judge a game or slam precisely. Sometimes, you will have to guess and hope for the normal distribution. But if you fail too often, reconsider your approach. And if you stop short of a game, but make it by good play, you may still have a good result, especially in pairs. In teams, the line between greed and rational bidding is lower, because the difference between down one and a part score is lower than the game bonus.
There are also cases where many players consistently overbid. Raising a 1NT replay by opener with meager 11 points comes to my mind. Another general case is climbing much too high with a misfit. Observe your mishaps. They are often healed by staying lower.
Bidding
Develop good Judgement
Bidding is always guesswork, and nobody can get it right all the time. That is by design. Bridge is a game of incomplete knowledge. Experts only guess right more often than more mediocre players. And that is all you can achieve too.
To develop this kind of judgement, you should analyze your results in a rational way and on the long run. One wrong decision is not a problem, but going wrong too often should make you suspicious. It takes experience to improve, but also a clear mind. So don't blame bad luck only, but also question your judgement.
If you go down in a game too often, you should ask yourself if you are overbidding too much. There is also a difference between pairs and team which makes the matter more complicated. And vulnerability plays a role too. But in general, overbidding is one of the most often found sin. Underbidding is much less frequent. Most players bid for excitement. In pairs, one should also keep in mind that one more overtrick than anybody else has the same 100% value as bidding a lonely game. Strategic thinking involves the quality of the competing pairs too.
Learn Competitive Bidding
Beginners are taught in much length about non-obstructed bidding first. This is necessary up to a certain point. I would simplify the system as much as possible in the beginning and rather concentrate on competitive bidding. It is much more important now.
Some players get in with almost everything, some bid very solid. Your partner should know about your preference. Mine is to intervene only with solid hands. This is a 5-card suit and 9 points on 1-level, and a good 5-card suit and 12 points on 2-level, preferably a 6-card suit. You can intervene on low levels with very little after two passes to revive the bidding, usually with a double for the non-bid suits.
Another good idea is to avoid letting the opponents play too low. If they cannot go on, you will probably have something too. If they have a long fit, you likely have one too. And learn about cue-bids and doubles if you are stronger.
How high can you defend if both sides have a fit? One guideline is the law of total tricks which works well in favorable vulnerability with the minority of points on your side. Simply compete to the number of trumps you have. This works remarkably well if you observe the mentioned side conditions.
I do not like too many conventions. But in competitive bidding, some are very helpful. The cue-bid over a minor intervention is one of them, showing support for partners major and a game try. Direct raises can be played only by length to block in a reasonable way. Then there is Lebensohl 2NT which applies after a double by partner of a 2-level preemptive opening and allows to differentiate a strong from a weak reply. Moreover, there are all sorts of ways to show 2-suiters.
The most random results stem from a competitive bidding. You should carefully observe how you are doing in this regard on the long run.
Use Game Forcing
Establishing game force early is not only relaxing, it also keeps space to explore the options, and it makes it easier to handle interventions.
The modern 2/1 convention treats any 2-level bid lower than the opened suit as game forcing. The most modern version requires 5 diamonds for 2♦, and consequently only 2 clubs. After that, I recommend the easy way for opener with natural bids, repeating his major opening only with 6 cards. Neither a reverse, nor a 3-level second suit promises extras. The disadvantage of this convention is that 1NT can have up to 11 points now. It should be treated as forcing. On the long run, you are going to love this relaxing convention.
Jacoby 2NT over a major can also be played as game forcing with 4-card support. You also have 2♣ if you play 2/1 and a delayed game race. But I would do that only to show an actual second suit. There different opinions about this. I prefer 2NT to be a strict game forcing.
When opener responds 1NT with a weak no-trump hand, most play third suit forcing by responder. But you can play it two ways. Then 2♣ is inviting in any form and 2♦ is game forcing. This does not lose much, but helps enormously if responder has the strong hand.
Fourth suit can also be agreed to be game forcing. There is the rare case where you want play 2NT if all stoppers are there, or reverting to a 7-card fit if they are not. But this kind of scientific part score bidding should be avoided anyway.
Remember the Double
In general, doubles should be played for penalty only if you and your partner have both bid, and opponent are clearly too high. Otherwise, a double is for take-out. Make sure it shows unbid suits, especially the other major, and some values. Partner will assume opening values at least. A double after two passes is much weaker and for revival, mostly to prevent the opponents from playing a low contract too easily.
Doubles over conventional bids can be agreed to start a penalty process with strength. It does not make sense to play them as take-out when you do not know the suits of the opponents.
It happens very often that opener does not have a good rebid after an intervention, but more than a minimum opening. The double is the best bid in this case. Just be aware that partner will have to bid unless he has a very strong holding against the intervention and does not believe in a game on your side. The line between trying a game or doubling the opponents is very thin for him. Usually, he will bid.
Examples
Almost every hand could provide an example. These principles of good Bridge are generic and apply all the time. So, I select a few which are not too hard to understand and still show my points.
This is a typical example of a declarer play which many players will simply put on automatic track. The 4♥ are a nice sacrifice because opponents can make 5♦, or due to a lucky club brake 5NT. Anyway, almost everyone will bid the same, although it is a bit borderline vulnerable against non-vulnerable. You need to keep it to down one, if possible.
The lead is a small diamond. Following the advice to get an overview, you should notice that there are only the top two trumps missing, and West has indicated a shortness with some points elsewhere. You can assume that both trump honors are at East. West might easily have some Aces. You look through your hands and see four losers, and a fifth if East gets to play through your clubs and West has the Ace there.
Now, you should not simply hope for the best, but see if you can avoid the problem. It should dawn to you that your chance is to find the ♠A with West and discard a club on the spades. So, play spades before anything else.
Of course, your next thought must be that West could duck and take the second spade. To your relief, you find that you can ruff to the table from the Ace of diamonds. In fact, it turns out that West needs to continue with the ♣A, or you will even make the contract.
When I had this hand, I bid 2♥ instead of 1NT, which got passed out. It is actually a bit more interesting to bid 1NT because it shows the point count and the stopper. The bummer is the bad diamond suit which got me to bid hearts instead of the more ambitious notrump.
You will get a spade lead in both contracts, and count 8 tricks from the top. You also know that East opened, and thus West should have at most 3 points, most likely ♦QJ. In your overview phase, you see that there is no point in trying the ♠J, nor in hoping for the diamond finesse. You already see that 2♥ is the safer contract. If you manage to make 3, you still get a good result.
The idea that works here is to take ♠A, draw the trumps crossing to the hand in clubs and exiting with a club. East has to come in for another trick making 2♥+1. Unfortunately, this is also the way to make 3NT. Too much luck for my taste. I prefer the partscore.
I have put this hand here, because it shows proper reading of opponents cards after giving the hand the initial thought, and why to be contempt with a partscore. In IntoBridge, I got someone playing 3NT-1, and that is probably what will happen in the club on most tables.
This is just a hand to remind you that you can always pass. You do not have to bid 3♥ here. If your partner blames you in case this could have been made, ask him why he did not double 3♦. You might be the only one getting a plus score in this board. The point count of South is somewhat misleading here. You have 6 losers in traditional counting, five of them top losers. Partner might have enough to make 3♥ with some luck, but then 3♦ is certain to fail by enough to make you happy.
This is a work in progress. More to come as I grow wiser, or find good examples of the principles above.
♠ - ♥ - ♦ - ♣
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