“How much does a mortician urn?” — graffiti

As long as there are bridge games, there will be postmortems. One player asserts that the contract could always be made, another insists that it could always be beaten. Meanwhile, a third is observing that his partner made a mistake a six-year-old child could have avoided.

Postmortems are a necessary evil, essential to improvement, but even a benign postmortem at the table can ruin your focus on the next deal. Save “discussions” for a dispassionate atmosphere after the game. Remarks at the table should be supportive — or intended to prevent a recurrence of the problem. They should not, for heaven’s sake, be meant to humble your partner.

In today’s deal, West led the jack of hearts against 3NT, and East took the ace and returned a heart. South won, forced out East’s ace of diamonds, won the third heart, got to dummy with the ace of spades, ran the diamonds and took the A-K of clubs. Making three.

“I’ve seen worse defenses,” West commenced the postmortem, “but I can’t remember when. You had 13 points, so you know I can’t have good hearts. Shift to the king of spades to force out dummy’s entry to the diamonds, and declarer goes down.”

The worst postmortems are based on a hasty and emotion-based analysis. West was wrong. If East leads the king of spades at Trick Two, South can duck, win the next spade and start the diamonds. After East ducks twice, declarer takes the K-Q of hearts and the queen of spades and exits with a diamond. East must lead a club from his queen, and South makes an overtrick.

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