Sharpen Your Defense

In this lesson:

No one could disagree with these two statements:

-- Every player would love to play better and do better than they presently do.

-- You will defend twice as often as you will declare.

From these statements, what should you conclude? In order to play better and be more successful, it is essential to improve your defense

Unfortunately, there is no question that defense is the most difficult aspect of bridge. Therefore, a pessimist would say "I am not a great player, so I will never be a good defender."

On the other hand, the fact that defense is difficult can work in your favor.  Because good defense is both difficult and subtle, the great majority of players fail to think about what they could have done, take no steps to defend better, hope that the problem will cure itself, and continue to frequently mis-defend.

However, if you are realistic enough to know that no problem is ever solved by ignoring it, this online lesson can be the first step to improving your defense.  And even if your improvement is modest, as long as you make some progress, you will be doing MUCH BETTER than your peers. They are under the delusion that all they need to do to improve is play a lot of bridge, and as a result, continue to make the same errors that they made in the past.

In this lesson, Marty will discuss:

• - The wonderful things you can accomplish when you are willing to count.
• - How to determine that it's "now or never."
• - How to make sure that your partner does the right thing.
• - How to cause declarer to do the wrong thing.
• - Why you MUST think before you play.
• - The right (and wrong) time to falsecard.
• - Why you sometimes should not want to get a ruff.
• - How to create trump tricks out of thin air.
• - When you should intentionally give declarer a ruff and sluff.
• - How to get a good matchpoint score by minimizing declarer's overtricks.

Here is an example of what Marty will discuss: 

Your partner leads the ♦J. You win the first trick with your ♦K. Declarer follows with the ♦7.

Plan your defense.

At trick 2 you should cash your ♦A. If declarer started with a singleton heart, you can't defeat him. But if you don't cash your ♦A, when declarer wins the ♥A and leads a second heart, once your ?♥K falls, he will make 6.

When declarer plays the ♦Q, so far, so good.

You now turn your attention to the other suits. You must set up a club trick for your side before declarer can set up dummy's hearts. Since you must lead a club, you'll need partner to have the ♣Q.

However, do you see the problem with leading back a low club? Even if partner obliges you by playing the ♣Q, you are ripe to be endplayed. Declarer will win the ♣A, draw 2 rounds of trump and exit with a club. After winning your ♣K, you will be endplayed.

So if you want to have any hope of defeating 4♠, at trick 3 you must shift to the ♣K!

Here is the entire deal: