BBO Discussion Forums: How to play partial contracts - BBO Discussion Forums

I'm a novice in bridge but not a completely beginner. Since I know a little sayc, a little declarer play, a little defense... But at the current stage, the most difficult part for me is to play partial contracts. Most of the introductory materials about declarer play focus on game or slam. But I feel partial contracts extremely puzzling.

Because in a game contract, I usually have dominated HCP or/and a good fit, I can plan the play before trick 1. Maybe my plan is far away from the optimal, but it's a plan. If I go down, I usually can figure out what was wrong, maybe a wrong finesse or entry management.
But in a partial contract, especially 1nt and 2 suit, hcps are balanced and trump fit is sometimes only 4-3. The suit combinations have many holes and I can't count losers and winners before I start. I don't know how to plan the play: there are just too many possibilities and I cannot get a clear picture.

So here are my questions: 1. Is this a common problem many novices have? 2. Should I stop worrying the partial contract play because I'm still a beginner? 3. If not, could anybody recommend any books or materials that I can improve or at least become a little more comfortable about partial contract play?

because of the many combinations part scores are played more "intuitively" than other contracts. There are many people who think 1NT is the hardest contract of all.

Some basic principles might help you.

When you have mainly fast side tricks (first and second round) you should forget about trump control and use as much trumps as you can ruffing. When your tricks are mostly slow (Queens, Jacks, lenght), don´t waste your trumps and stablish your winners while you are in control.

Drawing trumps in part scores is not as mainstream as it is in games/slams, this doesn´t mean you shouldn´t do it, but many more times you will find that you should not.

Avoid touching frozen suits (A109 vs Kxx is the most classical) that the opponents can´t play themselves, and force them to play something that fits you.

That´s all I can come up now, maybe put more later.

Great question.

With higher-level contracts, the options are a lot more limited and the hands generally fit nicely into a certain 'box' - draw trump, ruff losers in dummy, hold-up, squeezes, etc..

With lower level contracts, the planning is trickier, because there are many 'forks' in the play. Quite often, you'll play along general principles in the beginning that are just part of good technique, and as your count on the hand improves as the play proceeds, you'll have a better sense of how to continue.

The most important thing is to make sure you keep an active count and a solid reconstruction of the unseen hands.

If you had a specific hand and you think your thought process was flawed, post it here and you'll get some feedback.

 Phil, on 2012-June-23, 12:30, said:

Thanks for these suggestions, all! Maybe one reason I feel low level contract is difficult is I don't know how to play a suit with only a few high honors. For example, a suit combination I just played:

Q 7 6 4
A 8 4 3

I need to lose only 1 trick in this combination. What is the standard play here? Thanks!

 markyears, on 2012-June-23, 20:46, said:

As you become more adept at combinations, there are a few recurring themes. One is to "lead low toward honors". Leading the Q first is purely a novice play and caters to nothing. Playing low from both hands is subtle, but wrong when the suit breaks 3-2 and the K is on your left.

In general I play this combo low to the Queen without cashing the Ace. Cashing the Ace will snare a singleton on your right 2.8% of the time, but it doesn't matter otherwise.

Playing low toward the Q helps you maintain control of the suit. If you cash A, and play low to the King, you might find KJTx on your left. LHO rises K, and knocks out your queen. If LHO gets in, your trump gets drawn, and you might lose a lot of tricks when they run their side suit.

 Phil, on 2012-June-23, 21:07, said:

Thanks! Right, I agree with your approach. But the actual distribution is:

And the play by Jack 5 is: first cash A and then play small cards in both hands so K falls. It looks a little puzzling. But it works for this particular distribution.

I also find card combinations difficult to think about but when I'm faced with one that I don't know the answer to I try to think of possible layouts in the suit that I can pick up and choose the line that gets as many of those as possible. So for

Q764
A843

I'd start by considering 5-0 breaks, then 4-1, then 3-2. I'd think something like "if the suit is breaking 5-0 or 4-1 I cannot escape for one loser, even if the singleton is the K and I drop it. There are, however, some 3-2 breaks that I can pick up for one loser." They are

1) Kxx xx (location of J, T, 9 unimportant)
2) Kx xxx
3) xxx Kx

In 1) and 2) you can escape for one loser by playing low towards the Q (in these cases it does not matter in isolation if you cash the ace first or not). The K will win a trick but the Q and A will take care of the other two rounds of the suit.

If the layout is 3) you need to cash the A and then duck a round of the suit.

A good start would be to count how many of each of these there are and do whichever line is implied (trivially, 2 and 3 cancel each other out so, in isolation, the single line that picks up 1 and 2 is better).

It's important to realise that these considerations only apply to the suit in isolation - in an actual hand you could have many other considerations, such as entries, trump control and the potential for opponents to ruff (if this was the trump suit it might be that you'd want to cash the ace first to cut down on that chance if you did not fear losing trump control).

Edit: I wrote this before the previous two posts were up and took forever over it

 markyears, on 2012-June-23, 21:20, said:

Jack knows where all the cards are. You don't, at least not early in the play.

If you want to know what line has the best probability in a particular suit, the application to use is 'suitplay'

It is available here: http://home.planet.n...cis45/SuitPlay/

In this specific case, two lines of play have equal probabilities of success: Start with the 3 or 2 towards the queen, winning unless the king appears, or cash the ace on the first round. However, at both IMPs and Matchpoints the first line of play is superior as the second line has a greater chance of going two off.

Thx all! I think I should work on suit combination and counting...

Note that suit combination problems often have little to do with a real hand. The standard disclaimer is "assume no hints from the bidding, no transportation problems, no dangers of opposition ruffs". In practice at least one of these conditions is dubious, in particular, no transportation problems (it means that you have a lot of Aces and Kings so you can go from dummy to hand and back whenever you like so as to play the suit as well as possible) is unlikely when you're playing a partscore.

Remember not to take your tricks too early. Often you see good players in partscores play cautiously in the first few tricks, giving up some tricks for the defence. Then they will wrap up a lot of tricks towards the end of the hand. The advantage is that early in the hand defenders don't know much about the hand and will often open side-suits that give you the advantage or alternatively they will not open side-suits that they should have. If you play chess, this is similar to "the threat is stronger than the execution" and "keeping the tension". Of course this is just another general rule and it will often not apply...

Nice advice by gwnn in the post above. When I was a beginner I often struggled in low level partials and definately found them easier to play after a few tricks had been played as there often were fewer options and it became more clear as to which defender had what cards. I also found it easier to play when the defender's rattled off the first couple of tricks. Now with lots more experience, I am able to much better survey the assets and liabilities and come up with plans and contingencies as the hand progresses.

Here's one example from a recent hand that we were defending showing how having the opps win a few early tricks can help you.

PD hadn't opened and banged down AKQ♣(all following) and then exited. Declarer was missing one more king and soon took a finesse into my stiff king. Bad luck? .. nope bad play .. since if PD had a king along with AKQ in another suit he'd have opened. Thus declarer should have tried to drop my king and if failing, then see if there's a possible end play at some point, forcing my king to win and for me to make an unfavorable return. Many types of inferences become available later in the hand and counting opp's HCP and making inferences based on their bids or passes is trivial for experts.

.. neilkaz ..

Thanks for your very good questions.

Everyone struggles to some extent with part score contracts. Probably that's because declarer has much less control of the hand. Because you have fewer winners, part scores are more about recognizing your opportunities for developing winners and also recognizing how to avoid or prevent the defenders for setting you before you do so. Advanced/expert players have generally had much more experience at recognizing the opportunities and dangers in part score hands. But you haven't as yet. So, it's completely natural that you would have more anxiety about them. Nonetheless, everyone has to develop a plan of attack for the hand at trick 1 just like you do for game or slam contracts. Often it's less certain than at game and you may have to switch your plan as the hand progresses. But you need to start somewhere on the hand. Having a bad plan is better than having no plan.

Some questions you might think about on part score hands are:

Which hand or suit am I trying to set up? Which hand is the master hand?
Where or how could the opponents get enough tricks to set the hand? Is there a way to prevent that?
What lie of the cards do I need in the suit I'm trying to set up?
Do I need to take ruffs with the shorter trump suit holding? How can I ensure that happens?


In the suit combination you posed,

Q764

A832

not only should you understand what you hold, but also what's missing. In this case, you don't the KJ109 in the suit. So even if the suit breaks 3-2 they hold enough to score a second trick in the suit unless you can find a favorable lie of the cards. As a previous poster pointed out, that has to be the K located in front of the Q or possibly the K doubleton behind the Q. The normal play is to lead toward the Q, but you have two options in doing so. The first is to lead a low card toward the Q immediately. The second is to cash the A before leading a low card toward the Q. Which you do may depend on other factors in the hand. For instance, you may want to retain the A to prevent the opponents immediately scoring a second trick in the suit. You would play for a doubleton K behind the Q only if you had good reason to believe the K was behind the Q.

As a novice, your objective should be to get well schooled in the fundamentals of the game (declarer play, defending and signaling, bidding, and basic counting). Part of that should be study and part of that is just gaining experience by playing. If you take the time and effort to do that, you will become a much better player. Two books that help, at least, with the card play aspects of the game are:

Watson's Classic Book on the Play of the Hand at Bridge By Louis H. Watson

Modern Bridge Defense by Eddie Kantar

Neither book specifically addresses part scores, but they are excellent guides to the fundamentals. The first part of Watson is as good a start on all the card play fundamentals as there is. Kantar's book is the first of two books on defense. It comprehensively covers basic defense and signalling. The second Kantar book is more oriented toward an intermediate level player, so is best left til a little later.

Everyone, thanks a lot! I now have a little more confidence.