Hilo Bridge Club

Solving the Puzzle of Shapes of Unseen Hands

Clues from bidding and play are usually available for you to deduce the original shape of unseen hands. Once you can visualize those shapes, your path to taking tricks becomes much clearer. The issue for most of us is time: How are we going to do it in the heat of battle while the director’s clock is ticking?.

The answer is practice! Bridge Winners has developed a nice game to practice deducing the opponents’ original suit holding when one player shows out: http://bridgewinners.com/pages/counting-game/. Also, Bridge Winners has a nice discussion forum among well-known experts on how best to go about practicing: https://bridgewinners.com/article/view/counting-3/  How you do it is up to you, but I recommend you get started now.

I try to tentatively estimate shapes early from the opening lead and bidding. Usually, though, I must wait until one opponent shows out of a suit to reach a firm conclusion. When an opponent shows out, it becomes easy with practice to make a mental note of how many cards in that suit each opponent originally held.

Another source for practice: Larry Cohen’s guidance on counting and visualization: https://www.larryco.com/bridge-articles/counting. (BTW, I recommend you subscribe to his newsletter. It is a great resource for learning.)