The Fun Way to Serious Bridge

Finessing in a side suit requires the following basic steps: Decide which suit you want to work with and notice which of the high honor cards you’re missing. Determine how many cards your opponents have in that suit. Lead from weakness to strength, hoping that the opponent who plays second to the trick has the missing honor. Establish the suit by t

Even when length is on your side, you need to play the high honor cards from the short side first. Doing so ensures that the lead ends up in the hand with the length — and therefore the winning tricks. If you don’t play the high honor(s) from the short side first, you run the risk of blocking a suit. You block a suit when you have winning cards str

When playing at a trump contract, you can take a finesse to create extra winners, just as you do at a notrump contract (see Chapter 4 for more on finessing). You need the following setup to take a finesse and establish extra winners: An unevenly divided suit, meaning the dummy holds more cards in the suit than you do A majority of the honor cards,

Bridge is a game of giving up the lead to get tricks back. Don’t fear giving up the lead. Your high honor cards in the other suits protect you by allowing you to eventually regain the lead and pursue your goal of establishing tricks.

Never forget this simple and ever-so-important rule: When attacking an unequally divided suit, where either your hand or the dummy holds more cards than the other in that suit, play the high equal honors from the shorter side first (see Figure 3-3). Doing so enables you to end up with the lead on the long side (the dummy), where the remainder of th