CHAPTER 27

Sure Tricks in Defence

Bridge is luck, skill and your relationship with your partner. Never underestimate the importance of the power of this connection with the person sitting opposite you.

The defenders may sometimes have enough sure tricks to defeat the contract, but taking them may not be so easy.

Taking your sure tricks

Consider the following suit that you and your partner hold when defending against a no-trump contract:

If you were the declarer, you would have no trouble seeing that you have five sure tricks in this suit. You would also have no difficulty in taking the tricks. You could start by playing the high card from the short side, the queen and then playing a small card to your partner’s remaining high cards.

As a defender, the situation is much more complex. First, you cannot see your partner’s hand. Looking at only your cards, it is impossible to know that your side has five tricks in the suit. You might choose to lead a completely different suit. Even if you choose to lead the suit, you may not get all the tricks you are entitled to. Suppose you lead a small card and your partner wins the first two tricks with the ace and king and then leads a small card back to your queen. Now you are on lead and your partner’s remaining winners are stranded unless he has an entry (a winner in another suit).

If you are defending against a suit contract, there are additional difficulties. Even if you could see your partner’s cards, you would not know how many sure tricks you had without some additional information. After all, the declarer could have a singleton, or even a void. You may have no sure tricks in the suit.

The situation is far from hopeless, however. You can get clues from the auction – both from the bids made by your side and those made by your opponents. This will help you plan the defence and decide which cards to play during the hand. Next, there are a number of guidelines to help you when you have no other information to go on. Finally, you and your partner can help each other through the use of signals. You can give information through the specific card you choose to play in a suit.

In this chapter, we’ll look at some examples of how the defenders co-operate to make sure they get the tricks to which they are entitled. In later chapters, we’ll develop these concepts in more detail. The most important thing to remember is that you have to use your imagination. To compensate for the declarer’s advantage of being able to see both his hand and the dummy, you will have to try to visualize the layout of the missing cards. With a little practice, you’ll soon find yourself defending as though you could see right through the backs of the cards.

Leading your partner’s suit

Where are you going to start looking for your side’s sure tricks when they are not staring you in the face? If your partner has bid a suit during the auction, perhaps when opening the bidding or making an overcall, a good place to start looking is your partner’s suit. In fact, unless you have a clearly better alternative, a good guideline is: lead your partner’s suit.

To make sure that you get the sure tricks you are entitled to, you have to be careful in choosing the card you lead. Suppose this is the layout:

If you lead the 4, your partner can win the first trick and lead another heart which you win with the A. You have taken the first two tricks but you are now on lead. Your partner cannot take the rest of his sure tricks in the suit. Instead, you want to use the same principle that the declarer uses in this situation. You start by leading the A, the high card from the short side. Now you can play the 4 over to your partner and he can take the rest of his sure tricks in the suit. For a full explanation of this principle, refer back to Chapter 16, General Principles of declarer play.

Notice that you cannot actually see your partner’s cards when you lead the A. Instead, you are visualizing the potential layout of the missing cards that will allow you to take your side’s sure tricks in the suit. As a general rule, always lead the top of a doubleton in your partner’s suit. Let’s see how this works out when you have to make an opening lead from the following hand:

The opponents have reached a contract of 3NT after your partner opened the bidding with 1. You should lead your partner’s suit. With a doubleton, you follow the guideline of leading the top card, the J. Here is the complete hand:

Contract: 3NT

Your J wins the first trick and, when you lead another heart, your partner takes the A, K, Q, 6 and A to defeat the contract by two tricks. If you had led a diamond, the declarer would make the contract, taking five spade tricks and four diamond tricks. If you had led the 7 instead of the J, your partner would have won the first trick – but look what happens now! If he returns a small heart, you can win with the J but have no more hearts to lead to your partner’s hand. And if your partner instead leads the A or K to the second trick, your J will crash underneath it and establish a winner for declarer’s 10. Remember – in order to follow the principle of playing the high card from the short side in our side’s long suits, we must lead the top card from a doubleton in partner’s bid suit.

Leading your own suit

Suppose you end up defending against a no-trump contract and your partner has not bid a suit. Now, you might have to look for sure tricks from one of your own suits. It is not difficult to see where the sure tricks are coming from if you have a suit headed by the ace, king and queen, for example, but what if your suit looks like this:

A Q 8 4 2

This is where you are going to have to use your imagination. If you need to get & lot of tricks from this suit, you will have to visualize that your partner holds the K. If that is the case, how should you go about taking your tricks in the suit? You want to play the high card from the short side first, so you should start by leading a small spade. When your partner wins the first trick with his (hoped for) K, he will be able to lead a small spade back to you so that you can take the rest of your sure tricks. You hope the complete layout of the suit is something like this:

Note that if you started by leading the A and then a spade to your partner’s K, your partner would have no spade left to lead back to your Q. Of course your partner may not have the K but, as we shall see later, it may still be a good idea to start off by leading a low spade when you are going to need some help from your partner in the suit.

Sometimes, you cannot afford to lead a low card, even when you are missing one or more high cards. Suppose you have this suit:

K Q J 10 2

If you were sure that your partner held the A, you could lead a small diamond and your partner could lead a diamond back so that you would get five sure tricks in the suit. Unfortunately, you cannot see your partner’s cards and it is unlikely that you can be certain that your partner holds the A. If the declarer holds the A and you lead a small diamond, the declarer may win the trick with the 9 and still have the A. As we shall see in the next chapter, in situations where you have a strong sequence of cards, it is usually best to lead one of your high cards. In the above example, if the declarer does hold the A, you will at least prevent him from winning a trick with a smaller diamond and holding on to his A for later.

When you lead from a strong sequence of cards, you lead the top of your touching cards, the K in the above example. Why? Remember our earlier comment about giving information to your partner. By always leading the top card of a sequence, you tell your partner that you do not have the next higher card, but you do have the next lower card. In the above example, leading the K tells your partner that you do not have the A, the next higher card, but you do have the Q, the next lower card. All of a sudden your partner has information about the location of three cards.

Leading the top of a sequence can help the partnership take its sure tricks in this type of situation:

You can see that you have five sure tricks in the diamond suit but actually taking them at the table might not be so easy. If you start by leading the K and your partner lets you win the first trick, you can lead a second diamond to his A. Once again, however, you have ended in the wrong hand at the wrong time.

How can this be prevented? By leading the K, you are telling your partner that you have the Q and possibly the J as well, since you are leading the top of a strong sequence, rather than leading a low card. Now it is your partner’s turn to use his imagination. He can visualize your holding in the suit and he knows that the defence wants to start by winning with the high card from the short side. Instead of letting you win the first trick with the K, he can overtake it with his A and then lead back the 3 to the rest of your sure tricks. The technical term for this type of play is unblocking the suit since the suit would be blocked if your partner had only the A left with no small card to lead to your winners.

The declarer would have had an easy time taking five tricks with the above combination of cards. But the defenders can accomplish the same task with the use of a little imagination and ingenuity.

Summary

The defenders take their sure tricks in the same way that the declarer does. Whenever possible, they want to start by leading the high card(s) from the short side so that they can then lead a small card over to the remaining winners on the long side. Unfortunately, since they cannot see each other’s cards, it is more difficult for the defenders to determine whether or not they have sure tricks in a suit and, even then, they may have to be careful to ensure that they get all their tricks.

The defenders have to use their imagination to help visualize where sure tricks are coming from. They get their clues from the auction, from the cards their partner leads and from the cards their partner plays during the hand. In the end, you will often find that two heads are better than one!

Over Zia’s shoulder

Hand 1 Dealer: North

North	East	South	West (Zia)
1	1	1	Pass
2	Pass	2NT	Pass
3NT	Pass	Pass	Pass

Here I am on lead against 3NT and my best suit appears to be spades. I also have a nice-looking sequence in clubs. Should I start by leading a spade, or are there other things I should be thinking about? I’d better STOP and make my plan before I do the wrong thing.

Solution to Hand 1:

Contract: 3NT

S	Stop to consider the goal. We are going to need five tricks to defeat 3NT.
T	Tally the winners. We don’t have any sure tricks in our hand.
O	Organize the plan. With no winners in our hand, we are going to have to find some. I’m going to need help from my partner, so which suit offers the most promise? Although spades is our best suit, we must remember to listen to the auction. My partner overcalled in hearts, so that is where his length and strength is likely to be. With no clearly better alternative, I should lead my partner’s suit, hearts.
P	Put the plan into operation. With a doubleton in my partner’s suit, I lead the top card, the K. On the actual hand, this works very nicely. My partner lets us win this trick and I continue with the 6 over to my partner’s remaining winners. We get the first five tricks and defeat the contract.

If I had not led a heart, the declarer would make the contract, taking three spade tricks, five diamond tricks and a club trick. It is always important to listen to what your partner has said during the auction. Also, if I had led a small heart, my partner could win the trick and lead a heart back to my K, but we would be in the wrong hand to take the rest of our winners. By leading the K, we tackle the suit by playing the high card from the short side first.

Hand 2 Dealer: East

North	East (Zia)	South	West
	Pass	1	Pass
3	Pass	4	Pass
Pass	Pass

It looks as though my partner has made a good lead. If the declarer has no singletons or voids, we should have two sure tricks in diamonds and one in spades. But where is the setting trick (by ‘setting trick’ I mean the trick that will defeat, or set, the contract) going to come from?

Solution to Hand 2:

Contract: 4

S	We need four tricks to defeat 4.
T	Tally the sure tricks:
	Spades: Hearts: Diamonds: Clubs:	1 winner (the A) 0 winners 2 winners: (the A and my partner’s K) 0 winners
O	Organize the plan. Since we have only three tricks, we must use our imagination to see where we can find one more. My partner’s lead of the K has given a clue. Since he leads the top of touching high cards when he has a sequence, he should have the Q and, perhaps, the J as well. If the declarer has three diamonds in his hand, we are entitled to three sure tricks in the suit to go along with our A.
P	Put the plan into operation. We have to be careful to ensure that we get all our diamond tricks. On my partner’s K, I will have to play the A, so that I will have a small diamond left to lead back to my partner’s winners. Otherwise, the suit will be blocked. On the actual hand, this lets us take the first three diamond tricks and then a spade trick.

If I let my partner’s K win the first trick, the declarer makes the contract. My partner can lead a diamond to my A, but we have no way to get our other diamond trick. The declarer will eventually discard his remaining diamond on one of the dummy’s club winners.