The Waterbury Democrat., 1933-01-26

the trouble to do 50, he can frc- quentiy locate every card In the suit led. and that information will enable him to save many tricks In defensive play.
 The cards can be located by us- ing u simple mathematical device called the Rule of Eleven. The lat ter Is fundamental principle of defensive play and must be applied by everyone who wishes to ad- vance from the novice class.
 The declarer can also apply the Rule Of Eleven and it assists him in locating the cards held by his adversa ries. However, the declarcr knows his strength and weakness ns soon as he sees the dummy. and knows exactly what cards are out against him, while the adversaries have no direct way of learning it, therefore any Information eX- changed Is likely to be of more benefit to the defending side than to the declarer.
 ' The Rule of Eleven requires that the card led be the fourth best, or the fourth from the highest, card of the suit led (e. E. if you held Q-10-S-5-2, and that was the suit you had selected to open, the fivet spot should, be led).
 The numeral of the card led should be subtracted from II Gin this case five from II leaves six). The result will tell you the num- ber Of cards higher than the card led that arc in the hands of the three players other than the lead CT.
 Using the above example (part- ner opening the five spoD if dum- my now held king-9-6 and you, as partner of the leader, held acc jack-7, you would now say Ave from II leaves six. As there are three cards in the dummy higher than the five spot, and as your hand contains three higher, you would now know that the declarer held no card higher than the five.
 If dummy played the six, you would play the seven. which would hold the trick. If he played the nine you would win the trick with the jack, while If he played the king you would take 1t, with the ace
 The mathematical principle of the Rule of Eleven Is as follows: Cards in reality begin with the two spot-there Is no one spot. Now. let us substitute an Il spot for the jack, 12 spot for the queen, 13 spot for the king and a IA spot for the ace.
 Now select 13 cards from one suit of a deck and lay them out on hA tnI tt, xltaa aedn We are calling the ace, king. queen spots, respectively.
 Now select any tmall card and subtract it from the highest card the IA spot. If you had selected the five, you will now find, after de- ductinE five from 14, that there are nine cards higher than the five spot in every suit.
 As the card led Is always the fourth best, the leader therefore holds three of these nine cards, so instead of saying five from IA leaves nine and the three the lead- CT holds from nine leaves six, we shorten the procedure by deducting the three cards held by the leader from IA and arrive at the constant figure of II.
 Now, for practice, take the 13 cards of the suit you are using and deal them out in four hands-in any distribution you care to, mak- ing sure that the opening leader always has at least four cards. Lead the fourth best, look at the dummy, look at either of the other two closed hands, and see if you can tell how many cards higher than the card led are in the other closed hand.
 Practice this until you are thor oughly familiar with the working of the Rule of Eleven.
 It is very seldom that card higher than the eight spot Is ever led in the Rule of Eleven. When the nine spot Is your fourth hest card. you invariably have an honor. comb bination that should be led in preference to the fourth best.
 Copyright, 1888. NEA Service,
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