-
Planning your play
How can I decide what order to play my suits in?
Decide which suit offers the greatest number of potential
tricks
and lead it first. In most cases, this will be the
longest suit between Dummy and Declarer. While you have control be prepared to give the opponents their rightful tricks in your long suit if you can set up tricks for yourself by
doing so. Your decision should usually be controlled by the holdings you have in the suits contained between yours and dummy's hand, also affecting your choice is whether you are in a Suit or a
No Trump
contract.
If you have a suit with certain losers but you have a long holding, you should try to lose your losers; forcing out the opponents' high cards in that suit (trick promotion) before you lose control (with your stoppers) in your side suits.
No Trump Contracts
Start playing the suit which helps you to win as many tricks as possible, this is usually the suit in which you and dummy hold the largest number of cards. So, count the combined cards in each suit and generally the suit with the most cards is the one you should start with.If you have a suit with certain losers but you have a long holding, you should try to lose your losers; forcing out the opponents' high cards in that suit (trick promotion) before you lose control (with your stoppers) in your side suits.
Suit Contracts
In suit contracts unless you need to ruff losers in other suits first in order to develop additional winning tricks you should begin by drawing the trump suit . This is a suggestion not a hard and fast rule. If your quick tricks count shows that you have enough for the contract, then you should draw the trump suit first. This is the best way for avoiding a ruff (trump by the opposition).Exercise: The contract is 3NT - Which Suit do you need to start developing while you still have controls in the other suits?
North
West
East
South
Answer: Your heart suit. you need to develop an extra trick as you only have 8 tricks in total after all the aces have been played. So your longest suit and first choice should be hearts which you will hopefully if the cards are distributed 3-3 or 4-2 have to lose only one trick and then get your ace of clubs out while you still have stoppers (controls) in diamonds
Standard American - Practice playing here developing your long suits
Acol Practice playing here developing your long suits
To view the full version of this lesson (and 400+ more lessons) please Login.
Boost your Bridge skills with exclusive access to 60SecondBridge member only content
- Access hundreds of Beginner and Intermediate lessons
- Rapidly Increase your Bridge skills with practice hands for most lessons
- Test and revise your Bridge knowledge with interactive Bridge quizzes
- Practice your Bridge skills with Bridge games and activities
- Compete on the beginners Bridge competition ladder