Playing the cards better
Before playing a card, make a
plan of how to make the contract
- In trump contracts take out the
opponents trump whenever you hold 8 trumps between your hand and dummy
- If the opponents have a single
master trump leave it alone
- If you do not control trumps
dispose of side suit losers if you can before taking out trumps
- If you any suits of unequal
length between hand and dummy, lead the honours from the shorter suit
first to avoid blocking the suit.
- Set up long side suit winners
to dispose of short suit winners
- Do not cash side suit winners
until you have set up long suit winners
The
finesse:
- Whenever you have missing
honours try leading towards a
gap in the honours.
- Example: Holding AQ, lead towards these cards, playing Q if
the K does not appear
- Holding AJ10, lead towards, playing the 10 if either
the K or Q does not appear, hoping to capture either the K or Q on the
second time
- Lead towards a KQ, finessing against the A
- Do not lead the Q towards the A to capture the K,
unless you hold the J
- Try to ‘ruff’ out a missing
honour rather than take a finesse
In No-
trumps
- No-trumps is often a race
between your long suits and theirs
- Guard every suit for as long as
possible, until the contract is safe
- Hold up playing your winning
card to cut communications between defenders
- Establish your long suits
rather than cash short suit winners
- If you have a choice, finesse towards the danger hand
First Leads
- Good leads are tops of
sequences, like AK, KQJ, QJ10 etc
- If partner has bid, lead the
highest card in partners suit, unless you hold a better suit yourself
- Against a suit contract try to
avoid leading a low card from away
from an honour like an A or K
- Try not to lead A or K unless you hold the next
card in the sequence ( e.g AK … KQ…)
- Lead 4th highest of
your longest suit against no-trumps, provided it has not been bid by
Declarer
- Only lead Declarer’s suit if
you hold eventual winners in the suit
Bidding
Boxes
Take all
the cards for a bid from the BACK of the bid section, and put subsequent bids so
that all bids can be shown