There is a process of previewing the actual play of the cards by fitting your own hand to the picture of partner's hand as it is given by his — and sometime the opponents' — bidding.
In this manner the gaping holes in the hand are gradually filled out and a composite picture of the partnership hands is painted — a beautiful intellectual process when done by an expert, each deft stroke of the brush producing a logical inference.
Every bid partner makes must tell something about his distribution.
At first the information is meager. Suppose he bids one spade; all you know is that he has at least five cards in spades. His other eight cards remain a mystery. As partner rebids and rebids again, his distribution should become apparent within one or two cards, which is a reasonably low margin of error.
In general, when a player has bid three suits, or has bid strongly in two suits and has raised a third suit, it may safely be assumed that he has at most a singleton in the fourth suit.
Other cases in which a picture of partner's distribution is unveiled gradually as the bidding progresses:
South 1 ![]() 2 ![]() 3 ![]() |
North 1 ![]() 2 ![]() |
South has five diamonds, four hearts, four clubs and a void in spades. (With four hearts, four diamonds and four clubs he would start off with one heart.) North should merely bid three diamonds on
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He does not want to play a spade contract with a void in his partner's hand.
South 1 ![]() 2 ![]() 3 ![]() |
North 1 ![]() 2NT |
South has six hearts and four diamonds (with 6-5 or 5-5 he would have shown the diamonds before rebidding the hearts). This leaves him only three cards in spades and clubs together. North, holding
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should bid three hearts. A notrump contract would be dangerous, when neither partner can fill in the gaps in the other's suits.
South 1 ![]() 1 ![]() 2 ![]() 3 ![]() |
North 1 ![]() 1 ![]() 2NT |
South has 4-4-4-1, with a singleton diamond, or 5-4-4-0, with a void in diamonds. North, holding
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should bid four spades. At three notrump he would have only one diamond stopper, and the suit would probably be opened despite his bid.
When one opponent bids a suit (especially if he bids it at a high level, or rebids it) and the other opponent raises it, partner's holding in that suit may usually be counted by simple arithmetic.
North-South vulnerable, East-West not vulnerable. The bidding:
South 1 ![]() 3 ![]() |
West Pass 4 ![]() |
North Pass 5 ![]() |
East 2 ![]() |
East holds:
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South, who bid clubs at the three-level, must have five of them. North, for his raise to five, must have four; East has three. West has at most one club. Only one club trick can be lost.
East bids five spades, taking a vulnerable game rather than a penalty which will hardly exceed 500 points.
Thus, with each new bid or pass the player's hand undergoes a plastic transformation resulting in a different type of mental play of the combined hands. In the few situations analyzed here it has been possible to cover only a small portion of the many clues which put the finishing touches on this fascinating process of Plastic Valuation and thus turn every well-bid hand into a thrilling victory of the mind over the unknown.
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