You LHO Partner
RHO
1H 2C 2H
2S
4H Pass Pass Slow Pass
What do you make of RHO’s pause for thought before his final pass?
This is an opportunity to use your table feel – a subjective form of card reading that relies on good observational skills, psychology and bridge logic.
The starting point for developing table feel is paying attention to your opponents’ behavior. The more difficult aspects are analyzing the context and interpreting the clues they give you. Here are some tips for judging these situations.
Be patient. In the auction above, don’t automatically assume your RHO was leaning toward bidding more spades or clubs. At this point, all you really know is that he was considering something other than Pass. It could be 4S, 5C or even a penalty double.
To make an accurate inference, take note of the break now, then recall it when you’re analyzing other information. You may need to see dummy and a few tricks of the play before you know what type of hand RHO has.
The length of the hesitation may provide a hint. An opponent who wants to bid will usually take all the time he needs. One who passes after considering a penalty double will try to make that decision quickly, in the hope that he won’t give away his trump holding.
Keep an open mind about subconscious tells. Body language, facial expressions and other mannerisms are often related to how a player feels about his hand and the current auction. Sometimes, though, a sigh is just a sigh and means nothing. To correctly read emotional reactions, you have to figure out the cause.
If a player seems inattentive – looking away from the table, folding his cards – it’s often a sign he has a weak hand and no interest in bidding. He could, however, be lost in thought about a previous board or just having a bad game. An opponent who plays his bidding card with extra gusto might be revealing enthusiasm about the strength of his hand – or he could be annoyed with his partner or frustrated by how the auction has developed.
Look for extra information to determine if these behaviors reflect your opponents’ feelings about their hands or something else. Pay attention to their demeanor and conversation before the bidding begins. Analyze the current auction and try to construct hands that might elicit these reactions.
Size up your opponents. Make your best guess about their playing experience and assess their behavior from that perspective. Is your opponent acting nervous because he’s worried about his bid? Or is it a sign of a general lack of self-confidence?
Analyze what did not happen. Put your table feel to work when an opponent makes a quick decision in a situation that would typically require some thought. Ask yourself why he seemed to have no problem making his opening lead, responding to a slam try, taking the push in a competitive auction.
Build your knowledge base. Table feel is most reliable when you’re
playing people you know at club games and local tournaments. With practice, you
can learn to detect and interpret tells from other players, too. Make a note
after a hand where an opponent huddled or exhibited mannerisms you couldn’t
read. Consult the hand records later and try to figure out what bid he was
considering, why he was shaking his head, what made him laugh. The more you
learn about how bridge players think and react, the better you’ll be at
identifying the types of hands that trigger these tells.
An old partner prided himself on his powers of concentration. Once, on defense on a deal in a stratified pairs event, he made a risky switch that allowed a difficult game to make. Later, he explained that his lead was the only chance to break up an impending double squeeze, which, if properly executed, would have resulted in the same number of tricks.
His defense was brilliant in theory, but not in practice. The contract went down at several other tables and was likely to fail at ours, too, because we were playing a Flight C pair. When asked if he was aware that our declarer probably wasn’t a squeeze-savvy expert, my partner said he never paid attention to such distractions. He was watching only the cards, not the people.
It’s important to maintain your mental focus at the bridge table, but the most successful players are processing more than just what they learn from bids and tricks. They’re sensitive to the whole environment, including who their opponents are. These observations are the basis of table feel – the ability to read people and draw inferences from their behavior.
Know your customers. If you can accurately judge your opponents’ skill level, you have a better context for analyzing their decisions and making your own. When you’re trying to figure out if a defender made a mistake, it’s helpful to know how experienced he is. Before taking an iffy sacrifice, you’ll want to consider the reliability of the opponents’ bidding and the skill of the declarer.
Read tells in context. “Profiling” your opponents can also help you interpret their behavior. A novice may have very different reasons for hesitating than an expert would. An experienced defender who has obvious problems in choosing discards could be providing a hint that he’s squeezed or baring an honor. If it’s a beginner, he may just be taking extra time to recall the earlier play.
Factor in past experience. Your opponents’ personalities and bidding styles can affect your evaluation. In club games and local tournaments, you may already know which players are wild bidders, expert declarers or timid doublers. Keep those traits and tendencies in mind when making close decisions.
Make early observations. Sizing up the opposition is most difficult – and sometimes impossible -- when you’re playing just two or three boards against strangers. Try looking for clues before you start playing. Check their convention card to see if you recognize an expert’s name. A quick scan of their system will give you an idea of how sophisticated their bidding is.
When the Flight C pair came to our table in the stratified pairs, they were using pre-printed SAYC convention cards and discussing basic Stayman responses. My partner missed all of this because he was lost in thought about a hand from the previous round.
Don’t trust stereotypes. The signs won’t always be that obvious, so keep an open mind until you see real evidence. Be wary of jumping to conclusions based on appearance or mannerisms. Some opponents will fit the stereotypes – the shy, nervous novice and the intense, confident expert – but not all. A world champion may appear inattentive (but probably isn’t). Some beginners will exude confidence.
One contributor to a confident demeanor may be what psychological researchers call "irrational optimism". Research shows that less-experienced players tend to believe they'll perform better than they actually do. In a two-month study by University of Illinois psychologist Dan Simons, duplicate players were asked to predict their percentage scores before each club session. Participants were ranked by masterpoint holdings and each prediction was compared to the actual score. Simons found that players in the bottom third of the rankings were significantly more overconfident than those in the top third, even after seeing how much they had over-estimated their scores in previous games.
In the next issue: Neutralizing your opponents’ table feel
© 2018 Karen Walker