[Hanoi5]

The first time I heard of helping partner was in 'Killing Defense at Bridge', when Kelsey recommended overtaking or discarding in a way that would help the defense defeat the contract, instead of sloppily letting partner win the trick or just discarding with no interest.

I've also heard of this concept in the bidding. Don't make bids that would put your partner in a tough situation, don't get too creative so that he might miss your meaning, etc.

I understand this concept and its importance for professionals, but where do you draw the line between helping partner and just considering him/her dumb?

[Phil]

If my partner made a play that saved me from a mistake, I would not be insulted.

[tolvyrj]

I think the point here is not to play mushroom bridge aka. keep prd in the dark and to feed him/her lot of manure.
U try to bid what u have and take prd with u in u common effort trying to find best contract. U may have to mastermind bidding time to time for excample when u have very strong hand and all u need to know is wheter prd have trump support or few missing key cards.
But u shld not do that unless u have to.
Best excample of this r those guys who after prd has open 1 of the minor by pass they 4 card major and jump into the 3Nt with balance hands.

[FrancesHinden]

If you have a choice of bids or plays, one of which makes it easy for partner to do the right thing, and one of which makes it difficult, then you aren't calling her 'dumb' you are trying to get the best possible score.
If you have a choice of trusting partner or trusting the opponents, trust partner.
If you need partner to be clever to get the best result, then trust partner to be clever.

It's only bad - it's only treating partner as dumb - if you give up on trying to get to the right contract/get the defence right and just assume partner's too stupid to understand or do the right thing. If you can protect partner from going wrong, that's just being a good partner.

[jh51]

Here is a good example of protecting partner: http://www.baronbarc...com/051711.html

In this article, one defender makes a play that forces partner to make the play that defeats the contract rather than hoping he figures it out.

[Quantumcat]

"Protecting" your partner when you can promotes partnership harmony and trust.

For example:

You have two aces and your partner puts you on lead with one of them. Both declarer and partner are void in another suit and you can lead that suit through declarer, i.e. a trump promotion. But if partner has the king of the suit he led to you, you should cash it first, then have partner put you on lead with your other ace, before doing the trump promotion. If he doesn't have it, leading that suit will let declarer draw trumps, and if he does, not cashing it will let declarer discard his loser on partner's trump trick. How do you know what to do?

If you have a partner you can trust, they would have cashed the king before putting you on lead (after all, they know you have to ace or they wouldn't have led from the king). So if he doesn't cash it, he doesn't have it (or alternatively he DOES have it, but he knows two rounds of the suit are not cashing, so he pretends to not have it).

Without a partner you can trust, you would be completely in the dark in that situation.

Another example is when you know that you can cash out and defeat a contract, but your partner doesn't. Consequently you lead around into dummy's KJ, to force partner to take their ace. If you don't, later on declarer will lead towards it to sneak a trick, and naturally partner will duck.

So if declarer ever leads toward dummy's KJ, and partner has been on lead, then you don't need to worry about whether you can cash out to defeat the contract, cause otherwise partner would have made you take your ace.

But of course if you don't trust your partner to "protect" you, you are completely in the dark.