How to Play Quickly

There are lots of people who play SO SLOWLY you don't know what they're thinking about. Ever. Other people think about valid bridge problems. You can take some of that offline, though. Say you know RHO has 5 spades, 3 hearts, and 2 clubs. 13-(5+3+2) = 3, so he has 3 diamonds. Easy, right? Everybody knows that. But not everybody memorizes it. If you memorize all the distributions, then you don't need to do math. If you're slow at arithmetic, that can speed up your game a lot. Next time, just say 5...3...2...THREE, without the math.

So, memorization is great. Sometimes. The problem memorization, as with anything, is overdoing it. If you memorize something that doesn't always apply (like 2nd hand low, say) you give yourself a mental block. That's a bad idea, though arguably still better than playing super slowly.

I gave myself a mental block to pitch a loser on a loser. A few months ago I built a winner and pitched my loser on the loser but I should have pitched a potential winner on the loser, then pitched my loser on the established winner. It was SUPER costly when the cards hit the 1% chance where it mattered. And my partner expressed his...discontent.

It came up again this weekend, and I got it right. Yay me, for overcoming my learning disability. BTW, I wrote up this deal using bridgebase's deal viewer. Pretty neat, huh?

http://tinyurl.com/df5hju