CARD-READING BRIDGE Contract Bridge IS A LOGICAL GAME by STEVE BECKER Good defense is usually the result of logical thought. There are nearly always key clues to guide the defenders to their most promising line of attack. Consider this deal where West leads the heart six against three notrump. East wins with the jack and continues with the queen, on which South plays the ten and West the deuce. East is now at the crossroads. If he mechanically plays a third heart, South romps home with 10 tricks. Declarer wins and takes the losing diamond finesse, and that is the end of the trail. But if East pauses to take stock after trick two, he realizes that a heart continuation is futile. He can tell from the play to the first two tricks that West has the king of hearts and South the ace, and he can also tell from the bidding and what he holds in his own hand that South probably has all 10 -- certainly no less than nine -- of the remaining highcard points. West therefore cannot have an entry to his hearts if they become established. East’s best move at this point is to shift to a low spade at trick three, hoping to find his partner with the jack or ten. It is true that in the actual deal South can make the contract by playing the jack on the spade return, but unless he is blessed with X-ray vision, he is far more likely to let the spade run around to dummy’s nine. From declarer’s viewpoint, East is more likely to have K-10-x-x or Q-10-x-x of spades than K-Q-x-x, so the odds favor his playing low on the spade shift. If he does, West wins with the ten and returns a spade, and South finishes down one. (c) 2015 King Features Syndicate Inc. TO RACK OR NOT TO RACK BY ELAINE SANDBERG Once again, the controversy over whether to rack your tile or not is the topic of today’s post. It is a point of disagreement in many groups. For those who are not familiar with the strategy of racking—-it is to immediately place the tile just picked from the Wall into the rack, next to the other tiles. It is a defensive strategy because as soon as a tile is racked, no player may call for the just discarded tile. If the tile is not racked, a player may call, until the tile is racked or, as the rule (It’s #5 on the back of your card.) states, “discarded”. So the longer you hold the tile, or turn it upside down, or look at, or think about it before you rack it, the greater opportunity there is for another player to call. (And tapping it on top of your rack is not “racking”.) So with that in mind, the other day my friend Susan c o m p l a i n e d to me that her group was, unfortunately, at odds because some people racked and others didn’t and when a player called a tile, there followed a controversy about whether racking should be the reason a player’s call was negated. Susan is a “racker” and, as it turned out, she was the center of the disagreement. She explained someone, we’ll call Joan, had called. Susan objected saying “I already racked”, followed by Joan complaining it wasn’t fair and she didn’t rack when she picked, so Susan shouldn’t have racked. (Logic I don’t quite follow!) So to keep the peace in the group, Susan relented and Joan made her Exposure. “What can I do?” she asked. “They’re my friends.” Well, this is not the first time I’ve been asked that. But if no one in your group racks, or if everyone racks, it’s obviously not a problem. But if some do and some don’t, it is. So my suggestion to Susan was to make a “table rule” that everyone agrees to—a player who doesn’t want to rack, doesn’t, and a player who wants to rack, does, and if the call is negated by a racker, so be it—and no complaints! I have a feeling that under those circumstances, everyone will soon be racking! AMERICAN –THAT IS THE QUESTION Reprinted courtesy of the Jewish Journal of Los Angeles and Elaine Sandberg. Elaine is a mah-jongg instructor, who has taught the game for Holland American Cruise Lines and at American Jewish University, and the author of “A Beginner’s Guide to American Mah Jongg: How to Play the Game and Win” (Tuttle, $14.95). til next time... may the tiles be with you! 26 North Shore Towers Courier n February 2015
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