September 2022 - 52

Newer Players
Lessons Learned
Accounting of counting
I
learned to count while playing
hide-and-seek with my sister.
Innocent enough, but it led to
some confusion for my kindergarten
teacher. She tasked me with counting
rabbits on a worksheet, so I counted,
" One Mississippi, two Mississippi ... "
While counting is a basic skill, it
turns out that there are wrong ways
to count.
Everyone counts at bridge. If you
ever happen to kibitz top pros, you'll
occasionally see them ticking off fingers.
My father swears he once saw
someone take off their shoes to count
on their toes. Let's review the ways to
count effectively.
First, a quiz: What's the first thing
you count in a hand?
Answer: Your cards! Don't forget to
count to 13 with the cards face down
- sometimes mistakes happen, and
a card gets misplaced. Don't wind up
unable to play a board because you
were in a rush to look at your hand.
Consider this a warmup count.
The second thing you count (as
you may have erroneously guessed
before) is the number of points in
your hand. A lot has been written
about high-card points, including the
famous series by Marty Bergen called
" Points, Schmoints. " High-card
points serve as a guideline for you,
but as you gain more experience, you
should be willing to adjust your point
count. You'll differentiate between
good 12-counts, regular 12-counts or
bad 12-counts, and bid accordingly.
The other key point is to reevaluate
as the auction proceeds. If you count
your points and that's the end of your
evaluation, you need to force yourself
to ask, " Is my hand getting better or
worse? " after each bid.
52 | Bridge Bulletin | September 2022
We'll skip some of the other fancy
counting that people do in the bidding
for now. Winning trick count, losing
trick count, Monte Cristo count
(where you count the number of times
your partner has wronged you and
plot appropriate vengeance), etc., are
useful tools, but let's master the hammer
before we start using a grappling
hook.
After the auction ends, we get
an opening lead and then everyone
should start counting the dummy.
Declarer counts their winners or
losers and plans the play. Meanwhile,
the defense should review the auction
to try to start counting shape and
points for the hidden hands.
Say declarer opened 1l, rebid 1NT,
and dummy has 10 HCP. If you look
at your hand, you should have a rough
estimate of what partner holds. If you
have an 8-count, how many points
does partner have? (Answer: 8-10ish)
In
addition to counting points, you
can count shape. How many cards in
each suit can partner have based on
the bidding? How can you develop
defensive tricks? Visualize your partner's
hand using those limitations,
and then play for partner to have
the right cards to help you beat the
contract.
Lastly, we need to keep count of
suits as they are played. Walking
through a bridge club, I sometimes
spot a declarer staring at the dummy
looking horrified, consternated and
forlorn (it's a distinctive look). They
look both ways and call a card. A few
moments later, eyes cast downward,
they apologize to their partner and
say, " I lost count. "
While there's no cure for this (save
BY MICHAEL BERKOWITZ
michael@larryco.com
memory improvement) there are
some useful tricks. The best is to stop
counting 1, 2, 3, 4. Instead, try counting
in splits. Think about how the
missing cards in a suit are divided.
When you have an eight-card trump
fit, you know the opponents have five
cards between them. Those cards can
be split 5-0, 4-1 or 3-2. After each
round, you'll be able to update the
possible holdings. After one round
and they both follow, the suit is either
4-1 or 3-2. If someone shows out on
the second round, you'll know that
the suit was originally 4-1 and that
the person has two cards left in the
suit.
One last trick to counting is to
teach yourself to count in 13s. Think
about how 13 cards can be divided
into four hands. Sometimes, in lieu of
singing in the shower, I'll start counting
to 13 instead: 4-3-3-3, 4-4-3-2,
4-4-4-1, 5-4-3-1 ...
So, we've covered a number of
different times that we will have to
count. While the concept is simple,
the types of different ways we'll
need to count can make the task feel
daunting. Try to do your work in advance
as much as you can: Consider
the outline of the deal at trick one and
then fill in that sketch by counting.
September 2022

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of September 2022
