Planning The Play Tutorial - Suits ---------------------------------- In this tutorial, I will discuss guidelines for planning the play as declarer in suit contracts. This is a followup to the tutorial on planning the play in NT contracts from 2 months ago. I suggest you review that tutorial, as many of the principles are the same. I cannot emphasize enough that the most important habit to develop is, once the opening lead is made and dummy is tabled, STOP; do not play to the first trick until you have formulated a complete plan on how you will play the hand. Don't just think about the suit that was led or the trump suit; think about how you are going to play all 4 suits. Here are some modifications to the method you can use to formulate a plan (note that the basics are similar to the material in the NT tutorial, with some enhancements): 1) For all 4 suits, calculate how many winners and how many losers you expect. Use the principles we developed in the lesson on suit combinations. Note that there are some advantages to a suit contract over NT when counting winners and losers: a) Regarding losers, once you run out of a suit you have no more losers in that suit because you can trump any low cards in that suit (assuming you still have some cards in the trump suit). b) Regarding winners, you can set up a long side (non-trump) suit without necessarily losing as many tricks as you would have to in NT. This is because once you run out of the suit in one hand, you can lead the suit and trump until you have eliminated that suit from both defenders' hands. 2) Try to draw trumps as soon as possible. You do not want the defenders to trump your winning tricks. However, on many hands you must not draw trumps immediately. There are 2 common reasons why you might delay drawing trumps: a) You need to trump some low cards in the hand with the shorter trump suit. This situation occurs frequently when declarer has 5 trumps, dummy has 3 trumps, and dummy has a singleton or doubleton in a side suit. b) You need to force out some side suit high cards from the defenders while still retaining cards in the trump suit, to ensure that defenders cannot cash winners in another side suit. 3) Formulate a plan whereby you lose the lead no more than the number of times needed to make your contract, and you are still able to establish enough winners. 4) Make sure that once you establish your winners, you still have at least one entry that allows you to cash the winners. Review the declarer play techniques in the NT tutorial. Here are some additional techniques: 1) When determining how many rounds of trump to draw, most people (including bridge experts) find it easier to simply remember how many trumps remain in the defenders' hands. Counting how many trumps have been played (which is how many people are taught) is more difficult. For example, if you have 9 trumps and one defender shows out on the 2nd round, the other defender started with 3 and has one more left after the 2nd round. 2) When counting trump winners, don't forget to count the tricks where you ruff a card in one hand. A good technique for counting trump winners is to count how many winners you have in the hand with the longer trumps, and add the number of times you trumped in the hand with the shorter trumps. Here are some examples (assume you have a trump suit with no losers): a) If you have 5 trumps and dummy has 3, you have 6 trump winners if dummy trumps once. b) If both you and dummy have 4 trumps, you have 5 winners if either you or dummy trumps once. Similarly, you have six winners if you or dummy trumps twice (but you cannot draw 3 rounds of trump before trumping). c) Here is a slightly more complicated example. Suppose you have 5 trumps and dummy has 4. If you trump twice in your hand, you have six trump winners (the 2 trump tricks from your hand plus the 4 trumps in dummy). This is known as a "dummy reversal." 3) If the only defenders' trump remaining is higher than any of your trumps, it is often advantageous to not bother to draw it. You may be able to score your lower trumps by ruffing a loser, rather than wasting them on a trick that the defense is going to win anyway. Here is an example hand: (Dummmy) Kxx Ax Jxx xxxxx (You) AQxxx xxx KQx Ax Opening lead is the K of hearts. You should plan the play as follows: 1) Counting the number of winners and losers: S - 6 winners/no losers (5 trumps plus a heart ruff in dummy) H - 1 winner/1 loser D - 2 winners/1 loser C - 1 winner/1 loser You have 10 winners and 3 losers, so you should make your contract. 2) You cannot draw 3 rounds of trump immediately, because one of dummy's trumps must be used to trump a heart. Therefore, you should win the A of hearts and immediately lose a heart. You can then trump a heart, draw 3 rounds of trump, and lose the A of diamonds. Quiz ---- For each hand presented below, assume the contract is 4S. Given the opening lead, plan the play. 1. (Dummy) Kxxx xx Kxxx xxx (You) Axxxx AKxx Ax xx Opening lead is a club. Defense cashes 2 clubs and leads a third club. 1) Counting the number of winners and losers: S - 6 winners/1 loser if trumps split 3-1 (4 trumps plus 2 heart ruffs in dummy) H - 2 winners/0 losers D - 2 winners/0 losers C - 0 winners/2 losers You have 10 winners and 3 losers, so you should make your contract. 2) Draw 2 rounds of trump; if trumps split 3-1 leave the high trump out. Plan to trump 2 hearts in dummy. Even if your opponent over ruffs dummy, you will still have 6 trump tricks (5 in your hand, plus one ruff in dummy). 2. (Dummy) Kxxx xxxx KJx Kx (You) Axxx Ax Q10xx Axx Opening lead is the K of hearts. 1) Counting the number of winners and losers: S - 4 winners/1 loser (3 trumps plus 1 club ruff in dummy) H - 1 winner/1 loser D - 3 winners/1 loser C - 2 winners/0 losers You have 10 winners and 3 losers, so you should make your contract. 2) Win the A of hearts. Draw 2 rounds of trump. Knock out the A of diamonds. Even if the opponent with the A of diamonds draws a round of trump and then plays a heart, you will still have a trump in your hand so you will only lose one heart. You can then play your diamonds, throwing dummy's last heart, and take the last 3 tricks with KA of clubs and dummy's last trump. 3. (Dummy) KQxx AKxxx xx xx (You) Axxxx x Axxxx xx Opening lead is a club. Defense cashes 2 clubs and leads a diamond. This hand is a bit trickier. On the surface, your winners and losers are as follows: S - 6 winners/0 losers (5 trumps plus 1 diamond ruff in dummy) H - 2 winners/0 losers D - 1 winner/1 loser C - 0 winners/2 losers The good news is you have 3 losers. The bad news is you only have 9 winners. You must come up with a plan to manufacture another winner. If hearts are 4-3, you will have 3 heart winners once you ruff 2 hearts; this will provide you with your tenth winner. 2) Win the A of diamonds. Play the A of spades. Play the A of hearts. Ruff a heart. Lead a low spade to the K. Ruff a heart. Lead your last spade to the Q, drawing the last trump (assuming a 3-1 split). The K of hearts will draw the opponent's last heart (since this is the 4th round of hearts), and your low heart will be good. You will lose a diamond on the last trick. This technique is known as a dummy reversal, because you shortened declarer's trumps to 3 cards (by ruffing 2 hearts) and dummy has 4 trumps. Even many experienced players find this technique difficult to visualize, because they take a declarer-centric view of the hand -- they would go down with the hands as shown, but would have made the hand if the North and South hands were reversed! 4. (Dummy) xxxxx x AQ10x xxx (You) AKxxx Axx xxx xx Opening lead is a club. Defense cashes 2 clubs and leads a club. (Hint: there is a way to guarantee the contract even if East has both the K and J of diamonds.) On the surface, your winners and losers are as follows: S - 7 winners/0 losers (5 trumps plus 2 heart ruffs in dummy) H - 1 winner/0 losers D - 1 winner/2 losers C - 0 winners/2 losers You have 9 sure winners and potentially 4 losers. If West has either the K or J of diamonds (75% probability), you will have 10 winners and 3 losers, very good odds. However, there is a way to make the contract 100% of the time (assuming a 2-1 trump split). The basic idea is to eliminate clubs and hearts from both hands, and throw East in with a diamond. East will then either have to lead a diamond, giving you 2 guaranteed winners, or lead a club or heart, allowing you to throw a losing diamond as you ruff in dummy. This technique is known as a "strip end play", and occurs frequently in real life. Therefore, you should play the hand as follows: 1) Ruff the club. 2) Play the A of hearts. Ruff a heart. 3) Play a spade to the A. Ruff a heart. 4) Play a spade to the K. 5) Trumps have been drawn. Neither you nor dummy has any clubs or hearts left. Play a diamond and insert the 10. 6) Assume East wins with the J. (If he wins with the K, or doesn't win, you have made your contract.) If he leads a diamond, you are guaranteed 2 diamonds with the Q and A. If he leads a heart or club, you eliminate a diamond loser by throwing a diamond from your hand while you ruff in dummy. In general, it is often good technique to eliminate a side (non-trump) suit from both hands before losing a trick to the opponents. This means they cannot lead the eliminated suit unless they want to give you a ruff and discard, which usually provides you with an extra trick.