Bridge for Dummies

When you have sure tricks in a suit, you don’t have to play them right away. You can take sure tricks at any point during the play of the hand.

When you have a two-suited hand, you want to let your partner in on this little secret. You open with the longer of the two suits, intending to bid (mention) the other suit at your next opportunity. By the way, your second bid is called your rebid (you find out more about rebidding in Chapter 12). If you have two five-card suits, bid the higher-ran

Look at the honor cards at the head of your suit and estimate how many tricks you think you can take with those honors. Add an automatic three to that number.

If you have three cards headed by two honors, lead low unless the honors are of equal value. If the honors are equals, called touching honors, lead the higher honor. For example, from QJ4, lead the Q because the two honors are equals. However, from the Q103, lead the 3 because the two honors aren’t equals.

When you need to establish extra tricks, pick the suit you plan to work with and start establishing immediately. Do not take your sure tricks in other suits until you establish your extra needed tricks. Then take all your tricks in one giant cascade. Please reread this tip!

Trumping in the long hand, at times unavoidable, is a break-even play at best unless you’re trumping in the long hand purposely trying to establish the dummy’s long suit (see Chapter 7). On the other hand, each time you trump in the short hand, you gain a trick.

If you don’t have any of the three top dogs but you have four or more cards in the suit, you can still scrape a trick or two out of the suit. When you have length (usually four or more cards of the same suit), you know that even after your opponents win tricks with the ace, king, and queen, you still hold smaller cards in that suit, which become —

Lean a little closer to hear a five-star tip: If you want to live a long and happy life with unequally divided suits that contain a number of equal honors (also called touching honors, such as a king and queen or queen and jack), play the high honor cards from the short side first.

are based primarily on tricks, not on HCP. That is, your bid is based on a long suit (of at least six cards). Such a hand is worth something if that suit is the trump suit, but otherwise it may be worthless. The purpose of preemptive bids is to obstruct the opponents from arriving at their proper contract by forcing them to enter the bidding at an