Timing is Everything - Defense

In this lesson:

Knowing what to do on defense is not easy, but definitely is necessary. However, unless you also know when to do it, the outcome will often not be the one you are looking for.

Good planning is just as important for the defenders as it is for declarer. Unfortunately, because you get to see only half of your side's assets, it is usually more difficult to do.

A non-expert will never be able to defend as well as an expert. However, when shown the right way to size up a hand, every player can learn to defend better than they presently do.

This lesson will significantly improve your defense. The 15 challenging deals will provide an opportunity to provide a better understanding of ALL of the following:

• - The correct way to think at trick 1 before you turn your card over
• - How counting HCP can frequently enable you to find the killing defense
• - The great benefits of also counting distribution and # of tricks
• - How to draw inferences from declarer's line of play
• - How to "tell" partner the way you want him to defend
• - How to get the most out of partner's signal
• - When to say no to "second-hand low"
• - Know how you can prepare to "duck smoothly"
• - How to give useful information in "nothing suits"

Here is an example of what Marty will discuss:

After a lengthy North-South 2/1 Game Forcing auction, your partner leads the ♦5 against 6♠. You win your Ace and declarer follows with the Jack. What would you lead at trick 2?

ANSWER
North's 4♥ control-bid denied a diamond control, so declarer must have a control in diamonds. Therefore, most players would shift to a club, and hope that partner had strength in that suit.

However, this is NOT the correct defense. If declarer has 2+ hearts, because of your heart king, he must go down. But if he has 1 heart, because of dummy's three trump entries, he does have the potential to set up dummy's 5-card suit.

Here is the entire deal:

If you shift to a club, the play will continue:

Trick 2: Declarer wins the club ace.

Tricks 3-4: Declarer leads ♥4 to ace and ruffs a heart with the ♠9.

Tricks 5-6: Declarer leads ♠2 to the spade ace and ruffs a heart with the ♠10.

Tricks 7-8: Declarer leads ♠6 to the spade queen and ruffs a heart with the spade jack, which sets up dummy's 5th heart.

Trick 9: Declarer leads ♠7 to dummy's ♠8, which draws your last trump.

Trick 10: Declarer discards his ♣9 on dummy's last heart, and claims.

How can you stop him? At trick 2, shift to a trump.

Once one of dummy's three trump entries is removed, declarer has no way to make the hand.