IMPROVE YOUR PLAY
with Larry Matheny
Defensive carding is
important to a partnership but is often overlooked or ignored. Here is a hand where it was essential for
both partners to understand the meaning of the card played.
Scoring:
IMPs (Teams)
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BIDDING: The bidding was routine with East making a
lead-directing overcall.
PLAY:
I was West and obediently led my partner’s suit. I had to discard on the third round of hearts
and it was easy to see I needed partner to play a fourth round of hearts to
promote my queen of trumps. Using
standard signals I could play the deuce of diamonds to discourage a shift to
that suit. However my partner might just
exit passively with a spade hoping declarer didn’t have ten tricks. Because if I held only small trumps the resulting
sluff/ruff from another round of hearts might allow declarer to discard a
loser. But we were using Odd-Even
(Roman) discards. With this agreement,
an odd numbered discard shows in interest in the discard suit while an even
number card is discouraging with suit preference qualities. That meant the discard of the ten of diamonds
would show no interest in diamonds and an interest in the higher suit. Partner read my ten correctly and played a
fourth heart. Down one was worth ten
IMPs since game was made at the other table.
On any given hand any carding system might work
better than others, but the most important thing is for you and your partner to
agree on the meaning of each card played.
Copyright
©2010 Larry Matheny