Julian Foster’s hand commentary provides a good read every week. He picks up an interesting hand for commentary (sometimes from an SBC duplicate, sometimes from elsewhere). His column starts with a basic analysis of the hand then lists some key points to note as a quick summary to take away. It then ends with some more advanced points if you progress well with this laddered reading.
Julian is a many times NSW representative, he has an impressive bridge career as an individual player and coach!
- The “memory squeeze”
The term “memory squeeze” is sometimes used when declarer runs off a long trump suit forcing the defenders to make lots of discards and work out what loser(s) declarer has left in their hand – i.e. what suit to keep. Even though they often have … Continue reading - Whose suit is longer?!
When you are dealt an 8 card suit you can usually be pretty confident it’s the longest suit in the hand. Not on today’s hand (taken from the Spring Nationals Mixed Teams) which featured an even more unusual 9 card suit! We are often told … Continue reading - Setting up your side suit
When playing in a suit contract it’s often necessary to set up winners in one of the non-trump suits to make your contract. How and when you do that is often important. That’s the theme of today’s hand. Most North South pairs ended up in … Continue reading - Keeping your options open
On today’s hand taken from a recent teams congress most North South pairs played 3NT. But only 3 out of 10 made it. How would you have fared? The auction is likely to have been the same at most tables. 1♦ P 1♥ P 2♦ … Continue reading - Count tricks as well as losers
It’s always important to count your tricks as well as your losers. Today’s hand is an example where doing that should point you to the best chance of making the contract – although good defence can always beat it. Despite only 10 high card points, … Continue reading
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