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akwoo, on 2025-December-07, 17:30, said:
Here are my suggestions:
1) Have agreements on your leads and signals with your partner, enough to cover every situation where you can read the signal - which ideally means a meaning for every card played on every hand.
2) Hopefully there are hand records available for the hands you have played. Look at the hand records for hands you have defended, figure out what you could have done to make more tricks, and figure out how you could have known (or helped partner to have known) to do that.
3) Most of defense is counting more and keeping track of more information. (This is useful for declarer play too, but you can usually get further with declarer play without this skill.) When you get to the point of having enough brain space to keep track of this information (I don't have a good sense of how much of a beginner you are), you can start with the following: every time declarer has opened 1N, as soon as dummy comes down, add dummy's points, declarer's range, and your points, subtract from 40, and calculate your partner's range. Keep track of this information with every honor partner plays. When you have a decision about what high cards to play partner for, use this information to decide if your choice is possible.
4) Once chess computers got good enough, a lot of chess opening lines went out the window. Grandmasters discovered that lines following established opening principles were actually wrong because of specific tactical surprises. Tactically, bridge is fairly simple - it really is possible to analyze all the possible lines of play and how they will work out. So it really is possible - and frequently necessary - to forget about principles, figure out what the possibilities are for where the missing cards are, and calculate the play that will work for the most (or most likely) possibilities. Calculate, calculate, and calculate. Play slower if you have to.
5) A few weeks ago, I was dummy in a heart contract, with A87532 (or something like that) in hearts. Declarer led a ♥4 to the ♥A, my RHO showing out of hearts. The declarer then led a small heart from dummy. LHO, who started with ♥KJT96, played small. If you don't know after a few weeks of play (if not the first day) to go up with the K, I don't know how to help you get better at defense.
1) Have agreements on your leads and signals with your partner, enough to cover every situation where you can read the signal - which ideally means a meaning for every card played on every hand.
2) Hopefully there are hand records available for the hands you have played. Look at the hand records for hands you have defended, figure out what you could have done to make more tricks, and figure out how you could have known (or helped partner to have known) to do that.
3) Most of defense is counting more and keeping track of more information. (This is useful for declarer play too, but you can usually get further with declarer play without this skill.) When you get to the point of having enough brain space to keep track of this information (I don't have a good sense of how much of a beginner you are), you can start with the following: every time declarer has opened 1N, as soon as dummy comes down, add dummy's points, declarer's range, and your points, subtract from 40, and calculate your partner's range. Keep track of this information with every honor partner plays. When you have a decision about what high cards to play partner for, use this information to decide if your choice is possible.
4) Once chess computers got good enough, a lot of chess opening lines went out the window. Grandmasters discovered that lines following established opening principles were actually wrong because of specific tactical surprises. Tactically, bridge is fairly simple - it really is possible to analyze all the possible lines of play and how they will work out. So it really is possible - and frequently necessary - to forget about principles, figure out what the possibilities are for where the missing cards are, and calculate the play that will work for the most (or most likely) possibilities. Calculate, calculate, and calculate. Play slower if you have to.
5) A few weeks ago, I was dummy in a heart contract, with A87532 (or something like that) in hearts. Declarer led a ♥4 to the ♥A, my RHO showing out of hearts. The declarer then led a small heart from dummy. LHO, who started with ♥KJT96, played small. If you don't know after a few weeks of play (if not the first day) to go up with the K, I don't know how to help you get better at defense.
Good points but a word of caution. Your point two is liable to be misunderstood. When I used to teach, by giving a talk about hands from the previous week at the club, almost everyone was focused on the hand records….which was good in that we could all see the hands. But it was very bad because the records contained a statement as to what contracts could be made. So when 4S could be made by dropping the singleton king offside, two other finesses worked and a side suit broke 3=3, people asked how they could bid the game. The fact that the game required an awful play…dropping the stiff king with no valid reason, and was otherwise very unlikely to make didn’t matter. The hand record said N-S could make 4S so they all wanted to know what they’d done wrong. This sort of thing happened literally every week.
Do not encourage advancing players to study hand records to see how they could have done better…not without first repeatedly explaining that just because a line works doesn’t make it the correct line. A lot of players never seem to understand that and the results are uniformly disastrous
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