[Balrog49]

My bidding and declarer play are very good but my defense sucks. I get lost on hands where there's little or no information from the bidding. It seems like there are so many possible layouts of the unbid suits that I spend all my time and effort counting everything and trying to avoid mistakes, instead of using logic to visualize what's in the unseen hands. I don't understand why, but I'm infinitely better at visualization when I'm declarer.

I've struggled with this for many years and it's very frustrating. No one can tell me what I should be doing differently. I've read Kelsey and many other books on defense. I do much better with their example hands than I do at the table. Maybe it's the pressure from fear of making an embarrassing mistake. Helpful suggestions would be most welcome.

[dwar0123]

When you are declarer, you are in total control. 95% of defense is being on the same page as partner, signaling, giving count, freeing partner from squeezes/endplays etc.

Are you and partner on the same page, do you signal and give count consistently?

[Phil]

 dwar0123, on 2012-August-02, 15:37, said:

When you are declarer, you are in total control. 95% of defense is being on the same page as partner, signaling, giving count, freeing partner from squeezes/endplays etc.

Are you and partner on the same page, do you signal and give count consistently?

I couldn't disagree more, and I can prove it with math! OK, I´m kidding (about the 2nd part anyway).

As declarer, you start out with very little information about the unseen hands. Much of the time, a general theme is determined, and as new information is gathered, a more specific plan is formed. Your system would crash if you tried to analyze every relevant holding early on as declarer. Bridge is much easier when you are viewing things from 10,000 feet.

On defense, you can determine a lot about declarer´s (and similarly, partner´s) very quickly. Furthermore, the objective is much fewer tricks, so the relevant combinations are fewer. However, the information is there, you just have to go truffle hunting to find it, which takes work.

[sailoranch]

I can certainly relate, and I'm sure the struggles you mention are common to varying degrees. I think one of the problems is that we get stuck thinking in a certain way early on in our bridge development, and it's difficult to shake habits that have gone on for years.

Book problems are great, but you can cheat a little bit because you know that there is actually a problem, and if you are reading Kelsey, it's likely to have a sneaky solution. Bridge at the table isn't like that, of course. To go along with the time pressure and the social pressure, we know that book-type problems don't come up on every hand. There isn't always a brilliancy or a blunder waiting to happen, so when they occur, it takes us by surprise. You're aware of this, I'm sure. The practical bridge advice is to practice, and to treat every defensive hand like Kelsey is sitting over your shoulder waiting to yell "gotcha!" This is hard to do, especially when you're frustrated.

So my general advice is to be mindful of your bridge experience. Be fully active in the activity of playing. Notice when your concentration slips or your emotions are pulling you away from the game. Most importantly, do not judge yourself. If you make a mistake, do your best to let it go and continue. You can take note of how well you're doing in order to determine a strategy, but do not ruminate over your score.

This is as much about getting better as it is about enjoying the game. The best way to improve is to adjust your focus to a balance between the two, which will make it much easier to practice mindful bridge.

[sailoranch]

One practical thing to do is to pause at trick one as RHO to give yourself time to think. If you keep forgetting to work out the hands, this habit will remind you.

Also, your user name is awesome.

[CSGibson]

Defense is about counting, taking inferences, paying attention to partner, making assumptions, and counting again.

When dummy comes down, I try to do 3 things automatically as a defender.

1) Count the HCP in dummy and my hand, and then estimate what declarer likely has from the bidding. This is easier when declarer has limited their hand, obviously. Then estimate how many high cards partner has.

2) Take inferences from the opening lead and bidding. Has partner failed to lead my suit? Then it's likely that he has a sequence of his own, a singleton, or the ace of my suit (or, if leading trump, thinks that's the priority irregardless of the holding). Have their been informative pauses in the bidding by declarer? If so, his calls may be shaded in some way. An estimate of declarer's level of play will help you in judging how much his bidding is to be trusted.

3) Again, taking the inferences from the opening lead, bidding (and lack of bidding) and knowledge of the dummy, estimate declarer's shape. As the hand develops, adjust your mental picture of declarer's hand by taking inferences from play and from firmed up knowledge.

It all sounds like a lot - and it also sounds as though you are trying to do all of this, but that you are getting bogged down in the process and distracted by less relevent details from the important inferences. With more experience, you get to the point where all of this is fairly automatic, and where you can discard some things as irrelevent quickly, focusing on the truly important inferences for the hand.

If you get stuck, often you can get unstuck by asking yourself "what is declarer trying to do", and focus on stopping him, or asking yourself "why is declarer doing that" and taking inference from what you perceive as an unexpected play.

Other times, especially when defending with a competent partner, you don't need to do as much computation, you just need to know that partner has taken control of the defense and you should cooperate without a very strong reason not to. This is especially hard for people, I think, sometimes even at a high level, but is perhaps one of the most important skills you can have in a partnership defense.

[Vampyr]

Do your usual partners tend to be creative? Creativity can produce brilliancies, but a partner who plays your agreed defensive signals religiously with no injection of imagination will improve your results.

[CSGibson]

By the way, one of the sure signs that you are advancing as a player is that you notice how much you suck as a player. It means that you are noticing more mistakes (mistakes that you were presumably always making, but not previously identifying), which is the first step towards becoming much better.

A really helpful way of improving your defense would be to take the best player at your club playing in your game out for a meal or drinks after the game, and go over the hands. Try and sit in the same chair, the same direction, and have him/her slow down how he made certain plays or inferences for you. (If he/she is doing this, by the way, you are buying the dinner/beers I hope)

[nigel_k]

Everyone's defence sucks and that feeling that defence is the worst part of your game is normal for most of us I think. Visualization of possible layouts and the consequences of each action is harder when you can only see half of your side's assets and half the other side's assets.

In general, before playing a card, make sure you have in a mind a layout where your chosen card will work and the alternative(s) will not, and that is consistent with the bidding, declarer's line of play, and partner's defence and carding. Be sure to analyze what will work on the basis of declarer (and partner) adopting a single dummy, not double dummy, line of play.

It sounds like you already know this and there are really no shortcuts. Just keep plugging away until you get there.

[Quantumcat]

Nigel's 2nd paragraph is good advice. Always have a reason for the cards you play. Just try to think of one situation to start with and figure out what card will win. Eventually you'll get faster at this visualisation/analysis combination and you'll be able to think up more hands in the same amount of time.

As long as you have a reason for the card you play, then if you get it wrong you'll have material to think about, whereas if you just follow a rule you won't ever be able to improve what you did if the rule was wrong.

If you can get a partner better than you, it is easier to improve. Then you can trust all of his signals. (if you don't know what the right defence is, you can either obey his suit preference card or simply follow along with his defence, then later he can explain why he chose that defence - whereas if you have to come up with the defence yourself or you trust your partner to, you won't really be able to figure out what you were supposed to think about or even if it was possible to defeat the contract anyway).

[ggwhiz]

I never had this problem coming from a poker/hearts background as an income supplement through school. The key to success was learning to put yourself in the other guys shoes not paying as much attention to what you were up to but what THEY were up to.

You can excercise that part of your brain online for free but if you want to play for cash, I'm guessing you would suck at that too.

[FrancesHinden]

Defence is hard.
Defence is hard to improve by yourself. It's easy to improve declarer play with practice (e.g. with Bridgemaster) and reading books, because a lot of declarer play is a standalone intellectual exercise. There are rare hands where long discussions about what the defence might have done/might do are interesting but most of the time you can work on it by yourself. That's why there aren't many declarer play problems posted on BBO, because many people can work out for themselves what the best line is.

Books on defence are generally only useful if you are either just starting out or already very good, because they tend to be about spotting clever plays. (This is a gross generalisation.) Whereas really what you need to do is defend a lot of the bread-and-butter hands. But you also need to do that with your partner. The best way to improve is to have a regular partner and to discuss every hand with them. Even when it makes no difference, to make sure you agree what every card means. As a matter of principle, my partner has a theory that every card you play as a defender should have a meaning. It might be count, attitude or suit preference. If it's none of those things, it should be a deliberate false card or the card which gives declarer least information or is most likely to mislead him. When you are trying to improve, it's better to signal too much than not enough. If you start by always giving an accurate signal, you can improve your defence. After that you can decide when it's a good idea to stop signalling, but in general good players actually signal more, not less, as defence is so hard to start with.

The other thing you can do is look at hands you declared and see if the defence could have made things harder for you. Why didn't they?

(One difference between good players and less good ones is that the less good ones religiously signal count in declarer's suit. The better ones may still be giving a lot of signals, but they are less likely to be count.)

[Balrog49]

Many thanks to all who have responded. It's much appreciated. I should have provided a better idea of my level of play. I have about 1250 points and have won two open regional events, four Flight Bs, and dozens of sectionals. I've never won a national event so I classify myself as "Advanced" even though I've been advised to change it to "Expert." Maybe if my defense were better.

I stopped playing bridge for 20 years to raise a family but now I've been back for a few months and I'm finding that my bidding and declarer play are as good as they ever were but my defense is not.

I played in a two-session sectional pairs last Saturday with a good partner (about 3000 points). I made about four or five costly defensive errors and one awful declarer play blunder, which brought us down to average. See:

http://www.bridgebas...tract-now-what/

> The best way to improve is to have a regular partner and to discuss every hand with them.

Right now, I have only one regular partner who plays about as well as I do. Playing on BBO is a great way to go back over the hands you play and I intend to do a lot more of that. Maybe I can provide some "what should I have been thinking?" example hands.

[phil_20686]

 FrancesHinden, on 2012-August-03, 12:12, said:

Books on defence are generally only useful if you are either just starting out or already very good, because they tend to be about spotting clever plays. (This is a gross generalisation.)

I think books, if you make a real effort to solve the problems, really help improve your visualisation skills. So do double dummy problems. You really need to be able to hold a whole layout in your head and solve it before you can become a good defender. This becomes easier with practice. Start out by trying to visualise the last five cards in every hand, and all the ways they can be distributed. At that stage you should almost always know the shape of all the unseen hands.

[Yu18772]

I agree with all of the above - you need a good partner, discuss defense with them and follow your signaling system. You shold also understand that signaling does not come at the expense of potential tricks, and that partners preference signals should not override obvious plays, taking setting tricks etc...They are there to help you, not as absolute.
Another advise that I heard from a top player was that if you really want to try to become better defender, and you are already an advanced player in a regular partnership - try to play a 100 hands with no signaling system at all.....
I must admit that I never got to try it out.
Yu

[gszes]

the first step to successful defense it to study the dummy and in conjunction
with the bidding try to figure out what declarer is trying to do---once you have
a good idea try to figure out how to thwart their plan. While this will not guarantee
good results (good declarers try for the most flexible plans at imps) you will at least
succeed on hands where declarer has little choice on the play.

the second step is count count count count it is impossible to envision good defense
if you have little to no clue how the cards are distributed in each suit and make sure
you constantly reevaluate your count as evidence pours in from the play of the hand.

LAST thing to remember is that defending is HARD to do right. So much so that bidding
is becoming more and more geared to avoiding having to defend. The backs of the cards
are a much greater hindrance to the defenders than they are to declarer and good declarers
try to take advantage of this fog of war as much as possible. Since you defend roughly twice
as often as you declare (in my case i defend 5 times as often sigh) it is worth the time and
effort to continue working on this aspect of your game keep up the good work.

C S Gibson steps 1/2/3 are a much more comprehensive approach and they will be needed
when you start to get better overall.

[Balrog49]

Again, thanks to everyone who responded. It's very much appreciated.

One comment in particular hit home: "You really need to be able to hold a whole layout in your head and solve it before you can become a good defender."

I can do that when I'm declarer or solving a double-dummy problem, so there's no reason why I can't learn to do it on defense. When I get a look at dummy and feel helpless, I just have to choose a starting point and work from there, even when the bidding doesn't reveal anything and it seems like there are an infinite number of possibilities.

Whenever I make a mistake on defense, I'm going to copy the hand and post it here. Maybe someone can tell me what I should have been visualizing but wasn't.

[Cyberyeti]

 Balrog49, on 2012-August-05, 14:57, said:

Whenever I make a mistake on defense, I'm going to copy the hand and post it here. Maybe someone can tell me what I should have been visualizing but wasn't.

Post it as a problem, and ask people to explain why they do what they do. It may be that what you did is what other people would have done without 20/20 hindsight. It's very easy to get things right when you can see all 4 hands, and I think you'll get more useful info if you don't give the answer at the start.

[SteveMoe]

A lot of good advice already posted here already!
Let me add I found Kantar's Advanced book on Defense incredibly enlightening. The focus is on principlles and skills and less on problems per se.
1) Active vs Passive Defense and which situations call for which approach.
1b) active and passive opening leads
2) Counting HCP
3) Counting Declarer's Shape
4) Counting Declarer's Tricks
5) The 4 kinds of dummies and what to do against them (When declarer in a trump contract has a long suit missing 1 or 2 honors in dummy and plays on a third suit, when in lead the 4th suit asap. That long suit is either already established or partner's honors will be finessed. Conversely sittong on declarer's left if partner returns a trump instead of attacking the 4th suit. partner controls the long suit!).
6) Signalling
7) What was NOT bid by partner or the opponents...

...and more!

Don't get discouraged. I am amused by the ACBL convention card - where about 17% of the space is dedicated to defense. Defense matters more than 50%!

It's fair to say that all this counting and thinking takes practice. Expect things to be blurry and expect some (additional) errors as you practice your counting and analysis skills at the table. If you are a good card watcher then play with a partner who will signal with intent. If you can count HCPs with accuracy, then estimate declarer's shape. Was the auction strong? Attack!! Was it tentative? Let declarer do the heavy lifting.

You will get the hang of it.

[P_Marlowe]

Hi,

as mentioned, defending the bread and butter deals, is the most important thing.

An important aspect is, that defence is a partnership thing, you need partner,
you cant do it alone.

An option is, that you have sessions with a strong pair, after each sessions
(not after each deal), try to discuss to find out, what you did miss in the session,
try to focus on general patterns, a good example is the following list

http://www.kantarbridge.com/tips.htm

Also important is knowledge about bidding systems, how do they work, you dont need
the details, but you need to know, certain patterns.

E.g. simple examlpes, just to explain

(1C) - Pass - (1NT) - all Pass

The auction told you already, that declarer will have at most 6 cards in the
major, ...

(1C) - Pass - (1D) - Pass
(1NT) - all pass

If declarer showes up with only 3 diamonds, you know, his shape to be 4432.

With kind regards
Marlowe