Develop your bridge---declarer play

Leaving an opponents trump out

With a trump holding of, say,

H A 3 2

H K 7 6 5 4

even a 3:2 break will leave declarer with a trump loser. It is often expedient to leave this at large rather than drawing it. This play preserves an extra trump for declarer, sometimes in both hands, and also affords him the tempo-that is to say he keeps the lead.

In the case below, declarer would fail if he drew more than two rounds of trumps.

Dummy		Declarer
S J		S A 7 5 4
H K 3 2	#	H A 9 8 7 5
D A K Q 3 2		D 7 4
C J 6 3 2		C K 5

The contract is four hearts, and the lead is the king of spades. Work out how you would play it before looking at the solution below.

Declarer should draw two rounds of trumps and then play on diamonds, discarding spades from her own hand. The defender with the boss trump will eventually ruff but you have ample trumps in both hands to make your ten tricks. Note that drawing the last trump could well result in a diamond trick in dummy being inaccessible.

Look at this one. Again, try it yourself first. The contract is three spades.

Dummy

S K 7 3

H A Q 4 2

D 6 3 2

C Q J 7

Declarer

S A 10 8 6 5 2

H J 8 7

D J

C K 6 5

The defenders lead the ace and king of diamonds. Declarer ruffs and takes the ace and king of spades, trumps proving to be 3-1. It would be a mistake now to play a trump to remove the queen, since diamonds would force declarer to ruff and eventually the hand could be out of control. If declarer ignores the outstanding trump and attacks hearts and clubs, he has sufficient trumps to take care of any diamond attack, and comes happily to nine tricks.

However (!), just to show what a difficult game this is, the situation can be transformed if you have a long solid suit you wish to cash but have no outside entries. An opponents trump must not, in this case, be allowed to hurt you.

Dummy

S 4 3 2

H A 6

D 8 7 3

C K Q J 10 8

Declarer

S A Q 9

H K 8 7 5 4 3

D Q 6

C A 7

The contract is four hearts and the defenders lead the ace, king and jack of diamonds. Plan the play !

Your club suit is so superb that you can't afford to leave the opponents with a master trump here. Ruff the third diamond, draw three rounds of trumps and then run your clubs, making eleven 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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Three-handed bridge

This is the second form of three-handed bridge---one that will better suit the gamblers amongst you! The first version can be found here.

Deal out four hands. Take the fourth hand and distribute four cards to each player, five to dealer. These cards will become dummy, and having perused them, all thirteen are placed in suits face down as the dummy.

Each player now bids for the privilege of playing with dummy. You will know its shape and you may have seen some good cards go into it. Don't be timid!

Scores can be kept more-or-less as normal using three columns.