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    Glory of Notrump: World-Class Bridge in Action
    Glory of Notrump: World-Class Bridge in Action
    Glory of Notrump: World-Class Bridge in Action
    Ebook208 pages2 hours

    Glory of Notrump: World-Class Bridge in Action

    By John Sheridan Thomas

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    About this ebook

    "Glory of Notrump" shows you how to win bridge tournaments or to excel at rubber bridge by bidding and playing superior notrump contracts when most others are playing in suit strains. It describes how world-class experts bid and played notrump contracts in championship tournaments, including the Bermuda Bowl, the Venice Cup the World Team Olympiad, and others.

    "Glory of Notrump" was written by John Sheridan Thomas, author ot "Standard American 21", the book that has become the gold standard for modern rubber bridge players.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTrafford Publishing
    Release dateSep 30, 2011
    ISBN9781426976353
    Glory of Notrump: World-Class Bridge in Action
    Author

    John Sheridan Thomas

    John Sheridan Thomas devoted most of his professional career to management consulting, retiring as a partner of Devonshire Associates, Cambridge, MA. He is the author of the widely acclaimed "So Mr. Mayor, You Want to Improve Productivity...", published in 1974 by the National Commission on Productivity in cooperation with the Ford Foundation. Mr. Thomas and his wife Marian have played bridge since high school days, mostly in social and local teams-of-four contests. About 15 years ago he became a bridge teacher and club director, acredited by the American Contract Bridge League. In 2004 Mr. Thomas published the book "Standard American 21", a book written specificially to provide rubber bridge players with a modern bidding system. In this book he presents an integrated bidding system built upon Goren's basics of 50 years ago, bringing together the best and most widely recognized innovations since then. This contemporary bidding system is in some ways simpler than the earlier standard, and in a great many ways more precise. Mr. Thomas has authored a variety of bridge articles published in ABTA Quarterly and in Bridge Today. In his new book "Glory of Notrump" Mr. Thomas presents many ways to achieve a competitive edge whereever notrump is an appropriate contract strain. Serious bridge players can gain this edge by learning how better evaluate their hands and how to read through the backs of their opponents cards.

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      Book preview

      Glory of Notrump - John Sheridan Thomas

      © Copyright 2011 John Sheridan Thomas.

      All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written prior permission of the author.

      Printed in the United States of America.

      isbn: 978-1-4269-7634-6 (sc)

      isbn: 978-1-4269-7635-3 (e)

      Library of Congress Control Number: 2011914124

      Trafford rev. 09/27/2011

      7-Copyright-Trafford_Logo.ai

      www.trafford.com

      North America & international

      toll-free: 1 888 232 4444 (USA & Canada)

      phone: 250 383 6864 . fax: 812 355 4082

      Contents

      FOREWARD

      INTRODUCTION

      1

      MYSTIQUE

      2

      FLATS

      3

      SHADOWS

      4

      EARLY TO BED

      5

      NUDGING THE ODDS

      6

      MINORS

      7

      EMPTY SPACES

      8

      SHAPES

      9

      HONORS UP

      10

      YE OLDE QUANDARY

      11

      HIDE & SEEK

      12

      SAFE COMBINATION

      13

      ROAD TO GLORY

      C. TEAMS OF FOUR

      FOREWARD

      Some 60 years ago Charles Goren developed an integrated bidding system that quickly became the standard for virtually every bridge player in North America. What made it especially unique was his point-count method used to evaluate bridge hands. The simplicity and utility of Goren’s system led it to be adopted throughout North America, and so it soon became known as Standard American.

      As one would expect, there have been huge advances in bidding technology (bidding rules if you prefer the mundane) since Goren’s superb achievement. Naturally most of the attention has been directed toward duplicate bridge. This is not surprising since competitive players have the most at stake in getting it right. And by-and-large they have done so.

      Over the years it became apparent to me that both social and tournament players under-rate notrump by a country mile. Consequently I developed a seminar called the Glory of Notrump aimed at enabling students to find and play good notrump contracts which otherwise were being played in inferior suit contracts. It was a natural evolution from that seminar to this book.

      You will find explicit recommendations herein. They are supported by extensive research and statistical analyses that have not been applied heretofore to contract bridge.

      Glory of Notrump is replete with examples of experts bidding and playing notrump contracts in world championship venues. Assuredly your bridge game will be much better for having read it.

      *         *         *         *

      Artwork

      Each chapter is introduced with a sketch intended more or less to mimic the topic of the chapter. These sketches were created and drawn by my brother Augustus O. Thomas, II (Bud). Bud is the author of THOMAS THOMAS DESCENDANTS, published in 2008. Before he became a writer, he was an electrical engineer; and long before that when a young boy, he was a cartoon artist of wide repute. It seemed fitting to call upon his long-dormant artistic skills to dress up this book; besides the price was right.

      *         *         *         *

      Dedication

      This book is dedicated to Marian Wolfe Thomas, my beloved wife and numero uno bridge partner for 60 years and counting,

      INTRODUCTION

      Just ten points! In contract bridge, where games and slams score 300 points and up, scoring ten points more or less is relatively miniscule. I am referring of course to the incremental value of the first trick in notrump contracts, assuming you make your contract. In duplicate bridge, ten points produce match-point gains as valuable as any game or slam. Alternatively in rubber bridge ten points is a mere ten points, except that you need only nine tricks instead of ten or eleven in suits.

      Notrump

      Have you noticed how some bridge players avoid notrump contracts in favor of suits? These are substantially different games - suits vs. notrump. In suits you need not worry much about those short, weak ones, and often it is wise to concede a side loser or two in order to obtain a ruff.

      As we all know too well, playing in notrump requires different tactics. Easily the most important task is to establish slow winners (especially long suits if you are lucky enough to have any) before the defenders drive out your stoppers in their best suit. It is all about timing. It is easy to play top cards where you have them. But when you do not have enough quick winners, you must find a way to boost lesser-ranked cards into winners; and to accomplish this before it is too late. If you need nine tricks and can see a way to get them, it is of no avail if the defense manages to get five first.

      Occasionally notrump contracts require extraordinary skill to succeed. Experts have those unique faculties of tracking cards that have been played or not, and of visualizing the shape and substance of defenders’ hands as play proceeds. Fortunately for the rest of us, most good notrump contracts can be made with more limited faculties, provided we have acquired a sufficient, but indefinable, amount of experience.

      When you play difficult contracts, quite frequently success depends on the location of a key card or maybe two or three; and at times you have multiple choices as to how to proceed. So, in addition to experience, you need some basic understanding of probabilities (make that odds) to be able to select the most profitable line of play.

      Declarers get to see all of their assets while defenders must search for hints to find good lines of play; and quite often they do not succeed. This is especially true in notrump where time and again the defense, to prevail, must quickly find declarer’s weakness. Yet so often they are unable to do this. In fact it happens with such regularity that it is quite tempting to bid notrump games with less than 26 points. Perhaps with deals as light as - - . Oops, I am getting ahead of the story.

      Threads

      There are three major threads to this story. One is the notion of shape: how the shape of your hand impacts on the number of tricks you can take. This is an obvious relationship when we are dealing with suit contracts. Trumps are superior cards - the more you have, the more tricks you take; and short suits enable more tricks by ruffing.

      The roll shape plays in notrump contracts is more subtle and generally less understood by players at all levels of the game. Long suits produce slow winners in notrump contracts just as they do in suit contracts. Of course you need to get these slow winners before the defenders get theirs. The surprise is how large a role slow tricks play in notrump. Length begins at four, and it is notable how often fourth and fifth spots can win tricks for you.

      Another thread to this story is that standard bidding does not get us into good notrump contracts nearly as often as it should. Often notrump is bypassed in favor of a suit contract. And even when notrump is given its proper respect, we tend to under-rate one or another of the partnership hands and thus do not bid game often enough.

      This suggests a lack of precision or lack of confidence in partnership bidding methods. In uncertainty, staying with the opposition is a conservative posture. However if you knew with some certainty the odds of making three notrump were say 40%, you would not take that chance no matter whether the opponents were likely to go for it or not; because in the long run, it is not profitable to go against mathematical odds.

      Admittedly if you are behind in the fourth quarter, there may be no way to catch up except to take chances; and that could mean going for big swings where thin game tries and marginal penalty doubles may be the only means to make up a large deficit. My mathematical view of such is this: going for say 40% games in the fourth quarter can improve your chance of winning if the alternative is near-certain defeat.

      In close calls, there are qualitative factors to consider when making the decision of game or no. Actually any hand characteristic that we do not assign point values is thrown into the category of ‘qualitative factors‘. This is not a matter of preference; we do it because of an inability to assign hard point values. These factors include suit quality, intermediates, aces/kings, quacks, worthless doubletons, and so on. One factor, suit quality, can be assigned point values; and it is one of several ways to increase the accuracy of notrump game decisions.

      The third thread is to become more aggressive, in a disciplined way, when bidding notrump contracts. After reading this book you should find yourself playing more difficult contracts; surprisingly some will be easy to make; others will need exquisite judgment;

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