As declarer, you play both your hand and your partner’s face-up dummy hand, controlling the combined assets against two unseen defenders.
Before you play a card to trick one, stop and make a plan.
Your plan answers three questions: how many tricks you need (contract level plus six), how many you have for certain, and where the rest come from and what they cost.
Core Strategies & Counting
- Notrump Contracts: Count winners suit by suit. Length is not a winner until opponent cards are gone, and a suit can be blocked if you don't play honours from the short hand first.
- Suit Contracts: Count losers from the long-trump hand. Default to drawing trumps first, unless you need dummy's trumps for ruffing losers, as entries, or to stop an urgent discard.
- Eight-Card Fits: With eight cards between the hands, the missing five divide 3-2 about 68% of the time — the number most notrump plans rest on. (Missing the queen is a separate question: see eight ever, nine never.)
Finding Extra Tricks
Four main sources drive your plan:
- Promotion: Force out higher cards.
- Length: Exhaust opponents' cards so small ones win.
- Finesse: Try to win with a card while a higher missing honour sits in front of it.
- Ruffing: Use trumps in a trump contract.
Finesse Rules & Techniques
- Direction: Lead toward the card you hope will win, never away from it.
- Simple Finesse: Leads toward a tenace (about 50% chance).
- Repeated (Double) Finesse: Leads low to intermediate honours (three times in four for two tricks).
- Ruffing Finesse: In trump contracts, cash the ace and lead the queen to ruff or discard a loser.
- Eight Ever, Nine Never: With eight combined cards missing the queen, finesse (~50% vs ~33%). With nine cards, play for the drop (~52% vs ~50%). Real auction or defensive info breaks ties.
- Safety Plays: A deliberate loss or refused finesse that guards against a bad break at the cost of overtricks. Always check the count and ensure you have a spare trick first.
Defensive Control & Opponents
- Hold-Up Play: Refuse a winning trick in notrump to cut communication. Use the Rule of Seven (subtract your combined cards in the suit from seven to find how many times to duck).
- The Danger Hand: Identify the defender who can hurt you (holding long suits or sitting over your tenace) and finesse or duck into the safe hand.
- Counting the Hand: Combine the auction, opening lead, signals, and cards played until the fourth suit's distribution becomes pure arithmetic.
Advanced Endings
- Loser on Loser: Discard a loser from another suit on a trick you are bound to lose.
- Ruff and Sluff: Gain a trick when defenders lead a suit that is void in both your hands.
- Endplay: Strip safe cards from the defenders and hand them the lead with an exit card, forcing them to open a tenace or grant a ruff and sluff.
- Squeezes: With the count rectified, run a long suit to put maximum pressure on a single defender guarding two threats.
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