[Kaitlyn S]

I just opened a topic here for the fun of it, and saw that the presenter had posed a strip and endplay problem. A week or two ago, I saw the same thing. I am teaching classes at my retirement community. None of the players in the class would consider themselves beginners or novices but when I taught what I thought was a very basic lesson on when to draw trump, they all told me it was quite a difficult lesson.

I would never dream of putting a strip and endplay hand into a group where the prospective declarers have a difficult time with the concept of delaying drawing trump to ruff in dummy.

I see a few possibilities:

(1) The novices here online are just that much more talented than the ones I am teaching.
(2) The novices here are equivalent but the hands are too difficult for them.
(3) The novices here are mostly equivalent but most of the ones who are equivalent don't look at the forums anymore because the material is too esoteric.
(4) The beginners don't read the forums, and the benevolent souls who are posting problems for them are wasting their time.

I'd like to get an idea of which of these is true. I'm going to give a couple of examples from my Draw Trump class. Please let me know if you feel that these are way too easy to present here. If you were comfortable with the strip & endplays, then you don't have to look - these are definitely way too easy for you.


ª K 9 4

© Q 6 3

¨ 9 7 3

§ A J 5 4



ª A Q J 10 5

© A K J

¨ K Q J 10

§ 6



South plays in 6S with the lead of the §10. What suit should you lead at trick 2?



(To the advanced players who post here: I swear that in my class of "experienced" players, all four suits were chosen.)



Slight modification:

ª K 9 4

© 6 3

¨ 9 7 3

§ A J 5 4 2



ª A Q J 10 5

© A K J

¨ K Q J 10

§ 6



South plays in 6S with the lead of the §10. Do you draw trump? What is your general plan?

[akwoo]

Here's the problem. We're interested in reaching and helping novices, but only the novices who are potential Bermuda Bowl winners once they learn the game.

Okay, that's a slight exaggeration, but the truth is that I don't have much interest in teaching the novice who doesn't have the potential to eventually, say, fairly consistently make the second day of a NABC event (which is better than I can manage at the moment, but I hope to get there eventually). Such a novice might not have learned yet when to delay drawing trump, and even if they have learned the idea they might not yet be able to consistently apply it at the table, but they're also not going to find a lesson on it difficult.

In my case, my excuse is that my day job is as a university math professor, and I spend enough time and effort trying to help students who have trouble with very basic logical deductions. Lack of working memory is a serious issue. When you can't keep three different facts in your working memory simultaneously, you're going to have serious difficulty doing math or playing bridge even moderately competently.

Yes I do realize that the survival of bridge depends on welcoming players of all ability levels. I regularly play in a game of a low standard. I don't do the teaching (unless there is a talented player asking for help). I admit I prefer to play games where most of the other players are fairly good. I don't get much of that. Note that teaching the player who finds a lesson on delaying drawing trump to score a ruff difficult isn't going to help with the goal of developing a game of good plyers.

I'm not sure that it's even worth teaching this lesson to them. They can't keep track of enough pieces of information to recognize the situation, so you get frustrated and they get frustrated. Better to teach a lesson on some obscure convention; it's not any more useful, but at least they feel like they learned something.

[apollo1201]

I think your examples are very illustrative and are good for building logic thinking as declarer:
- how many losers
- how to dispose the excess ones
- what could go wrong
- etc.

They are the perfect material for a lesson.

I was the one who posted the end play (and a few other ones as well in the past months) that were real life deals to show learners that the technique they saw 2 weeks ago in class and that seemed far fetched or very rare actually happens IRL.

Maybe the subjects were above novice (I m pretty sure there was an elimination and end play as well, and maybe a funny cross ruff in what I posted). I also remember hesitating about an an automatic squeeze (just take your winners, there is nothing else to do, and sth magic happens) but eventually decided against.

OTOH, hands where assessing if a delay in trump pull is required or not happen all the time (except in NT obviously😁😁😁).

So thanks for your interesting questions about the usefulness of this section. To me it was posting almost textbook hands form real tourneys for learners to recognize a moderately complex situation they saw.

But it is probably an issue of 2 and 3 that answer your questions.

[pescetom]

I think a lot of the problem here is that above the N/B forum we have I/A and E, rather than I and E/A. While N and B are essentially the same thing, A is way above I and aspiring to become E.

Delayed drawing of trumps is clearly N/B, just as strip and end play is clearly I. What causes people to downgrade I problems to N/B is probably that the I/A forum is currently more oriented to A problems (such as squeeze finishes) and readers.

[Kaitlyn S]

Thanks for the replies.

Of there us anybody that considers themselves a novice or beginner reading this, let me know. There is not much sense in posting material to not be read by its intended audience.

I will post answers to my problems later.

[apollo1201]

 pescetom, on 2026-September-14, 05:56, said:

I think a lot of the problem here is that above the N/B forum we have I/A and E, rather than I and E/A. While N and B are essentially the same thing, A is way above I and aspiring to become E.

Delayed drawing of trumps is clearly N/B, just as strip and end play is clearly I. What causes people to downgrade I problems to N/B is probably that the I/A forum is currently more oriented to A problems (such as squeeze finishes) and readers.

You nailed it. A vs I.

[Kaitlyn S]

ª K 9 4
© Q 6 3
¨ 9 7 3
§ A J 5 4

ª A Q J 10 5
© A K J
¨ K Q J 10
§ 6

South plays in 6S with the lead of the §10. What suit should you lead at trick 2?

For the beginners & novices (I still want to hear if you're reading this!!)

You win the ace of clubs and count your losers (from the hand where trumps are longer) and notice that you have one diamond loser. Nothing can go wrong unless the opponents trump one of your winners or you run out of trump before giving up the ace of diamonds.

You must lead trump right away. Count trump by saying "I have 8 trump so they have 5. If everyone follows twice, they split 3-2 and I must draw one more." On this hand, someone shows out on the second spade trick so you need to play trump four times. That's four and not five; if you play the fifth unnecessary trump (because the opponents are already exhausted of trump), the opponents can cash club tricks when you lose your ace of diamonds.

Notice the downfall if you trump a club in your hand at trick 2 (which can't gain anything because you were going to make all five of your trumps anyway.) Now you only have four trump left and need to play all of them to draw the opponents' trump when they split 4-1. When you lose the DA, the opponent will cash a club.

Also notice the downfall of promoting the diamonds early. Someone might win the DA and give her partner a diamond ruff. Down 1 on a hand that should have made easily simply by drawing trump.


ª K 9 4
© Q 6 3
¨ 9 7 3
§ A J 5 4

ª A Q J 10 5
© A K J
¨ K Q J 10
§ 6


South plays in 6S with the lead of the §10. What suit should you lead at trick 2?


Here when you count your losers, you notice that you have a heart loser in addition to the diamond loser. You might ask why I count the heart loser with only two hearts in dummy? Simply because if you think you don't have too many losers, you will draw trump and discover too late that you can't trump the heart loser anymore. You'll have to rely on a heart finesse (leading toward the HJ hoping that the queen is on your right) and that only works half the time.

Now that you notice the second loser, you can easily take care of it by leading the HA and the HK and then trumping the HJ in dummy. You might as well trump the HJ with the SK in case East only has two hearts; because your SA, SQ, SJ, and S10 will take care of drawing four rounds of trump, and if trump split 5-0 you can't make the slam anyway.

Once you trump the heart, you don't have too many losers so you draw trump until the opponents have no more, and then stop playing trump. You will promote diamonds and take the rest of the tricks.

Please notice that whereas trumping the club in your hand didn't help any (and in fact was disastrous when you run out of trump) because you only take a trick that you were going to take anyway based on your trump length, trumping the heart in the dummy where the trumps are shorter gained a trick because you take all five of your trumps plus the trump in dummy to take a total of six trump tricks.

If you have learned nothing else, remember that trumping in the dummy where you have shorter trumps is GOOD. Trumping in your hand where you have longer trumps is BAD.

Some of my esteemed advanced colleagues may point out that it is occasionally beneficial to trump in the long hand. If you are barely understanding what I am saying here, please ignore their words of wisdom until you are totally comfortable with normally drawing trump but making an exception when you need to trump losers in the dummy first.

[Kaitlyn S]

Well, there you have it folks! I researched how many novices and beginners read these forums, and the answer is a resounding zero!

Have we chased them all away because some of us only care about the future Bermuda Bowl winners, or do beginners just not care enough about learning?


I'm not sure about online, but my experience at the retirement center is that the players (who would be considered novices here) are only too eager to learn! I had a major success - one of my students has largely stopped rebidding five card suits!