Develop your bridge---declarer play

Playing the cards in a suit in the right order

Sometimes, when you have certain tricks in a suit and are simply 'running' it, it is important to take your cards in the correct order as you can, thoughtlessly, block yourself out of the long hand. I hope you will find this page trivial, and can quickly move onto another. You will find a more thorough treatment of blocking and unblocking on this page.

With no other entries to dummy, suppose you hold

Declarer	#	Dummy
K 7 3	#	A Q J 9 5

While you can take the cards in the order ace, king queen etc, it would be fatal to take them in the order ace, queen, king since the remaining cards in dummy would then be inaccessible.

A good general rule for beginners is to take the winners in the short hand first, the short hand being the one with the fewer cards, declarer in the above example. Consider the situations below:-

A 7 6 facing K Q J 9 3 play the ace first

K 2 facing A Q J 7 play the king first

Q 4 3 facing A K J 5 play the queen first

J 2 facing A K Q 5 4 play the jack first

This next example illustrates the very elementary mistake that none of you would make, I'm sure.

Declarer

S A 7 3

H A K 9 8

D A K 8 2

C K 5

Dummy

S 6 5

H 6 3

D 7 5 3

C A Q J 10 9 4

The contract is 3NT and the lead is the spade king. You can count your eleven tricks so after taking the ace of spades, you take your ace of clubs first, then your king of clubs. Oh dear ! How am I going to get back on the table ? Sorry partner, two light !

The next one is similar. There aren't many variations that can be rung on this particular theme !

Dummy

S 4 3 2

H 5 4

D A Q J 10 3

C 4 3 2

Declarer

S K 7 6

H K 7 5 2

D K 5 4

C A K Q

You are in 3NT which can be defeated by best defence, but defenders let you off the hook by letting you take the initial spade lead with your king. Your diamond suit offers five lovely tricks provided that you take your king on trick one or two. Safest to take the king first to be absolutely sure and then go over to dummy to run the rest of your diamonds, eventually coming home to nine tricks.

When you are ready, have a look at these practise hands which encompass concepts from all aspects of declarer play.

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The origins of bridge (8)

You can return to the start of this topic if you wish.

Ian McLeod continues his description of the epic bridge match between England and the USA in the early 1930's.

'The result of this tour-de-force of organisation (electronic score-boards, periscopes, reflecting mirrors and commentators) was that the spectators knew more of the progress of the match than did the actual participants and had the additional advantage of being able to see how the British and American teams dealt with the more difficult and exciting hands.

Nothing like it had ever been attempted before but the gamble, if gamble it was, succeeded in a way that left even Fleet Street groping for adjectives. For the six days of the match, over 27,000 people succeeded in watching it in Selfridges and so many more were left outside that the police, unable to cope, were compelled to divert the traffic'.

You can continue this topic here, if you wish.