29 de Enero 1939
There is one basic tenet of winning bridge psychology which can be briefly summed up as follows:
Always make it as easy as possible for partner to make the correct lead or play; but always make it as hard as possible for the opponents to make the correct lead or play.
I have spoken elsewhere of the fact that in giving a come-on signal I like to make it scream just as loud as it can. Players who fancy themselves as masters of subtle play glory in gingerly dropping a club three and following it up with a club two. They are proud because they have made a high-low signal, and they are even pleased when their partner fails to notice it, so that they can have the pleasure of bawling him out. I would rather drop an ace, if I had it to spare, and take no chances that my partner might be asleep at the switch. An extra trick, neatly arranged and stacked on the table in front of me, is worth more to me in a bridge game than a feeling of superiority.
A major portion of the skill in bridge consists in making it as easy as possible for your opponents to make a mistake. In this connection a sound estimate of your opponents’ mental level is indispensable. A man who refuses to make a play because he has looked ahead in his analysis and his discerning brain has foreseen the possibility of defeat if an opponent makes a Vienna coup and a double squeeze, would be a very bad bridge player if he acted on the assumption that the opponent would actually recognize and execute the squeeze play, when he knows all the time that this particular opponent has hardly the ability to make a simple hold-up play.
In the following deal it is proper psychologically to make a play which is technically atrocious. The self-righteous expert would make the correct play and feel abused if it were pointed out that it had cost a game. Here the play which is correct technically would be a coarse psychological error.
When the declarer may be unable to recognize certain niceties of the game, give him enough rope to hang himself:
South was declarer at three no trump. West opened the diamond five and dummy’s four was played. East saw a good chance to shut out dummy’s club suit, but he also saw that unless West was leading from diamond ace-king, the diamond queen would pretty surely be an entry. The only chance was that South might block the suit. In order to give him every opportunity to do this, East did not play third hand high, but instead played the diamond three. His ruse was successful. South lacked the presence of mind to play his ace to unblock the suit. He won the first trick with the diamond six, and tried to establish the clubs but the king was too well guarded and the contract was defeated. East’s «bad» play was his only hope; if he had followed the principles of sound bridge rather than of sound psychology lie would have played the diamond jack and forced South to make the correct play whether he wanted to or not.
In another case a ridiculous doubled contract depended upon an opponent’s error. On straightforward play that opponent would have had no opportunity to go wrong; so the declarer went out of his way to give him a chance.
South, dealer. Neither side vulnerable.
South bitterly regretted his opening psychic bid, which had been based upon the fact that East and West were poor players and South thought it possible to talk them out of game, not knowing of North’s powerful hand. North did not get wise to the psychic until South had finally passed five spades and when West doubled, North finally gave thought to a possible psychic and failed to redouble. West opened the diamond king and shifted to a club, which South won with the queen. South now took a heart finesse, and then played dummy’s heart ace. It was a welcome relief to see the king drop, although the contract was still hopeless, unless by some particularly lucky chance the spade honors were doubleton. But South saw one more chance and promptly went after it.
He led the ace of clubs and then the king from dummy. East, had he been able to count up to thirteen, could soon have realized that South had nothing to discard. But the technique of suit placing was something about which East knew nothing and South knew that he knew nothing. When the club king was led from dummy, East was so anxious to save a discard that he ruffed with the spade three. South overruffed and now the lead of the ace and a small spade dropped both the honors and South made his contract.
It never hurts to take a little extra trouble and ask the opponents to make you a present. They may be big hearted, generous people and say yes. The most common attempt at deception used by the defending team is the use of false echoes or encouraging discards which would purport to show strength where there is none, or vice versa. Frayed and shopworn though this method is, it can in rare cases succeed in gaining a trick. Usually, however, it can do nothing but put the declarer on the right track.
Not only must the player strive to conceal the weaknesses of his hand, but he must learn how to disguise its strength. The presence of key cards must be as carefully camouflaged behind the hold-up of finesses, deft un-blocking, or a nonchalant under play, as the big guns during the battle. If he is in the lead against opponents three no trump with a hand such as 
53 
752 
KQJ107 
742 and declarer «held up» on the lead of the diamond king and then the diamond queen, effectively exhausting the diamonds in partner’s hand, the player should, except when the nature of some suit in dummy promises that a switch will be profitable, bravely keep on leading the suit even though it is perfectly hopeless. To switch «on general principles,» as even experts are in the habit of doing, is a coarse psychological error. The switch would reveal the hand in all its abject nakedness and tell to the declarer, more eloquently than with any words, just how to choose with a practical certainty the direction of his finesses and end plays.
Even an expert player often fails to realize that in many cases it is practically impossible to make a decision on a play (or a bid) without knowing or obtaining some information from opponents. The opponents also need information. Hence the importance of, first, concealing as much true information as possible, and, second, attempting to mix up the message by conveying wrong information. To do this successfully a player requires a system of bridge psychology. The system will take into consideration, besides the specific factors of concealment [camouflage] and misinformation (aggressive bluffs), the factors of opponents’ and partner’s mental types, as well as their emotional make-up. The last two factors are also indispensable in the game of life and those who have learned them previously will be successful psychologists at the bridge table.