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Understanding Duplicate
Pairs Master Bridge Series, £8.99, ISBN No. 0-304-36218-2 You either hate it, or you love it – Duplicate Pairs, that is. I have spent a lifetime trying to avoid it, but maybe if I had read a book like this many years ago my own attitude might well have been different. Many people of course simply do not understand that there is a difference at all between pairs, teams or rubber bridge, and think that the aim is simply to play good bridge and do the best you can on any particular hand. The trouble is, though, that playing pairs means that ‘doing the best you can’ doesn’t necessarily mean playing sound bridge, as Ron Klinger and Andrew Kambites are at pains to disclose in this, their latest offering in the Master Bridge series. Playing pairs you have to move heaven and earth to do better than the other contestants holding the same cards as you, and if that means taking a risk to score +150, with +120 assured, then if you are sure everybody else will be scoring +140, that is a risk you cannot afford not to take. The authors teach you how to best resolve a host of decisions
which are bread and butter to the pairs’ devotee. Just how high do we
compete? Should we double the opposition to change a hopeless +100 into
the magic +200? Should we play our 6
By a miracle, you arrive in the excellent
contract of 6 If you were greedy, you would ruff in dummy, play a trump to the ace, ruff another club and then play for hearts to be 3-2. If so, you would have an easy thirteen tricks. However if trumps broke 4-1 you would fail to make your slam. Technically the best way to play the contract, whatever form of the game you are playing, is to duck a trump at trick two. Win the return, ruff another club and draw trumps, claiming twelve tricks. Why is this line correct at pairs? Because you will have recognised that you are already likely to be a step ahead of your competitors when you bid the slam, and you must do everything to maintain your advantage. My own expertise in the pairs department was in estimating my score as we went along (er, I make that 50.73%, partner) and there is even a chapter here on how to do just that. Complete beginners to the pairs game will be baffled by the added complexities that this form of the game takes, but those determined that the cut-and-thrust of matchpoint scoring is for them will surely improve their game if they take the advice given in this book.
Dave Huggett |
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© Bridge Plus 1999-2006
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contract safely to ensure twelve tricks, or do we take a chance for the
overtrick? Maybe there is not too much here that hasn’t been said before,
but the authors have a happy knack of making things seem simple – simpler
than they really are, I dare say. One chapter which particularly appealed
to me was the one entitled: ‘Understanding how a board is going’, which
highlights the fact that you have to be continually aware of what the
other five, ten, or one hundred tables might be doing with the same board.
A 4
10 9 3
10 8 7 6
