Just starting out with Bridge, never thought (d'oh!) to count points in dummy, both partner's and opposition, and work out the remaining HCPs... Obvious now I've been shown. Thank you so much and greetings from the UK 😊
The most important numbers in bridge to remember are 13 and 40. With these numbers you are able to reverse engineer every distribution. :D I hope you like bridge. It is really fun.
nice exposition of counting the hcp and shape. to my mind declarer could have had 6 spades and 4 diamonds, maybe even 6-5, but the pricnicple of thinking about the lie of the cards (shape and hcp) is nicely illustrated.
Another lesson demonstrated here, don't overcall at the two level vulnerable on poor suits, unless you have extreme distribution or a lot of HCP to compensate.
Avoiding being endplayed at 12:30 is quite a difficult skill to develop. Playing the SJ feels counterintuitive, because it draws 2 trump from the defenders (both you and partner) and only one from Declarer. It requires seeing ahead 2-3 tricks rather than going on "autopilot" trying to give partner another heart ruff.
Rob, can you post your lecture from September 23 rd? If you don't have it now, can you make a video? YOu could give us hands and ask us to guess cards. Thanks!
At 12:40 could Declarer discard on the H6? He would gain control of trump if N trumps to prevent Dummy winning the H trick. Yes, he still goes down, but less.
