This Week in Bridge
(565) Card Play – Guarding a Suit
© AiB Robert S. Todd
Level: 5 of 10 robert@advinbridge.com
General
Taking tricks with small cards is an important part of Declarer’s plan for making their contract. As a Defender, it is our job to do everything we can to stop that from happening. That means that suits that have potential winners or threat cards must not be allowed to grow up into winners. We attempt to prevent this from happening by covering an honor with an honor (to prevent promotion) and by holding onto our cards in the opponent’s long suits – called guarding the suit. Let’s see what it is to guard a suit and make sure that we do everything we can to prevent their potential winners from becoming actual winners.
What is a “Guard”?
We say that we can guard a suit if we are able to stop all of the cards in that suit from becoming winners.
Example 1 – Classic Guard
♣ AK9
♣ QJT
As long as we keep all three of our ♣ cards, we will be able to prevent dummy’s ♣9 from becoming a winner. We can guard this suit and protect against the threat card of the ♣9.
Example 2 – Potential Guard
♦ AK9
♦ J53
Here we can guard this suit and prevent that ♦9 from becoming a winner. If Declarer has the ♦Q, then they will have two winners and we cannot stop that. If partner has the ♦Q, then we can guard this suit. If partner has the ♦Qxx they can guard the suit as well. But if they have only the ♦Qx, then we are the only player who can guard the ♦ suit.
For us to even have a chance of guarding a suit, our largest card must be bigger than the card we are trying to stop from becoming a winner.
Example 3 – No Chance
♥ AKT4
♥ 985
Since we have a 3-card suit, we can only defend against the first three cards becoming winners. Since our ♥9 is smaller than dummy’s third card, the ♥T, we cannot guard this suit.
Guarding Length
To recognize that we can guard a suit, sometimes we must be an optimist about partner’s holding in the suit.
Example 4
♠ AK84
♠ JT ♠ 97652
♠ Q3
Here we see that our ♠9 will prevent Declarer from winning four tricks in the suit.
♠ AK84
♠ 97652
If all we can see is our hand and the dummy, it is much more difficult to recognize that we are guarding the ♠ suit and preventing Declarer from winning additional tricks. We have to be creative and think about what could partner have. If partner has ♠Jx, we can stop Declarer from winning a fourth trick. If partner has ♠Qx, then we can hold Declarer to only two tricks in this suit.
It is often easiest to guard suits in the dummy, where we can see what is going on (hence the advice to “keep the same length as the dummy”). We also need to remember to guard the long suits in Declarer’s hand – so we must imagine what they hold and think about can we stop their holding from becoming additional winners.
Tough Choices
Sometimes we are faced with what seems like an impossible choice. Consider the following situation:
Example 5 – The Pseudo-Squeeze
Declarer plays a winner (in ♥ or ♠) and forces us to make a discard, before the dummy.
♦ Q
♣ AK9
♦ A
♣ QJT
It is extremely tempting to hold on to our ♦A, but we can see here that we are the only member of our partnership that can guard ♣. We must guard the suit only we can guard. Here we must discard our ♦A and hope that partner has the ♦K. (If they do not, just blame them! Actually, if they do not have the ♦K, then we are squeezed and there was nothing we could do.)
Conclusion
When Declarer plays winners and forces us to discard, they put us under pressure. A classic mistake that many players make is to keep their highest card. A better way to approach deciding which cards to keep is to ask yourself, “Which suit is partner guarding?” or “Which suit can only I guard?” If you can learn to keep the right cards, then we will guard one suit and partner will guard another – thus preventing Declarer from winning tricks with their little cards and giving us a bad result!