Bridge Card Play

Declaring, defending, and the language of spot cards.

Declarer: Making a Plan#

The single largest improvement available to most players is to stop before playing to trick one. When dummy appears, count — before you touch a card.

In no trumps, count winners. How many tricks can you take right now, off the top? If it is fewer than you need, ask where the extra ones come from: length in a long suit, a finesse, or forcing out a high card while you still control the suit.

In a trump contract, count losers in the declaring hand: how many tricks can the defence take? Then ask how to get rid of them — ruff them in dummy, discard them on dummy's winners, or finesse to avoid them.

Then, and only then, ask what could go wrong. Which distribution beats your plan? Is there a line that survives it? In rubber bridge, the answer to "should I take the safe line at the cost of an overtrick?" is almost always yes: overtricks pay a trick's worth above the line, while going down costs you the whole contract and the game with it.

A practical order of operations for a suit contract: draw trumps unless you need them for ruffing, do your ruffing before drawing trumps if you need dummy's trumps, set up your long suit early while you still have entries, and cash your winners last.

Technique: Trumps and Ruffing#

The finesse. With A Q opposite small cards, lead towards the A Q and play the queen: if the king is in the hand that plays before you, the queen wins. A finesse is a 50% proposition and the most common way of manufacturing an extra trick. Card Play Technique covers when to take one and when to refuse.

Drawing trumps. Every trump the defence holds is a potential ruff of one of your winners. As a default, draw them. The exceptions are worth learning: do not draw trumps when you need dummy's trumps to ruff your losers, when drawing them costs you an entry you need, or when you must set up a side suit first.

Ruffing. Ruffing in the short trump hand — usually dummy — gains a trick, because those trumps would otherwise take none. Ruffing in the long hand generally gains nothing: those trumps were going to win anyway.

Entries and hold-ups are the other two skills that decide contracts at this level, and both have a section of their own in Card Play Technique: counting the entries to each hand before spending one, and refusing an ace to cut the defenders' communication.

Defence: The Opening Lead#

The opening lead is made blind, before dummy appears, and it decides more contracts than any other single card. The standard rules are:

Lead partner's suit if they bid one. It is the most reliable information you have, and a lead-directing double of an artificial call asks for that suit specifically.
Top of a sequence. From three touching honours — K Q J, Q J 10, J 10 9 — lead the top one. It is safe and it attacks. Interior sequences count too: from K J 10 9, lead the jack.
Fourth highest of your longest and strongest suit otherwise. Against no trumps this is the standard attacking lead: you are trying to establish length tricks before declarer establishes theirs.
Against a suit contract, prefer a safe lead. A singleton can be excellent if you have a trump entry to take the ruff; an unsupported ace, or leading away from a king, frequently costs a trick.
Against a slam, lead safe and passive. Against a doubled contract, listen to the auction — a double of a freely bid game often asks for an unusual lead.

Two spot-card conventions carry information: from three or more small cards lead the lowest (showing an honour is possible above it), and from a doubleton lead the higher card. Combined with the fourth highest rule, partner can often count the suit exactly.

Defence: After the Lead#

Defence is the hardest part of bridge because each defender sees only half of their side's assets. A few reliable rules carry most of it:

Second hand low. When declarer leads towards you and you are second to play, play low as a default. Your high card will usually take the same trick later, and playing it now may hand declarer a free finesse.
Third hand high. When partner leads and you are third to play, play your highest card — you are trying to win the trick or force out a high card from declarer. With touching honours, play the lowest of them (it tells partner you hold the ones above).
Cover an honour with an honour — usually. If declarer leads a jack and you hold the queen, covering can promote partner's ten. Do not cover when declarer has a sequence of them; the first honour led from a sequence is usually not the one to cover.
Count the hand. Follow the suits: thirteen cards in each, declarer and dummy's holdings are known once dummy is down. Counting one suit exactly is often enough to place the critical card.
Do not break a new suit if you can avoid it. Leading a suit costs a trick more often than not; make declarer do the work.

In rubber bridge specifically, defending accurately against a part-score matters more than it does at duplicate, because stopping the opponents from reaching 100 below is worth far more than the fifty points on the pad suggest.

Signals and Discards#

Defenders talk through their spot cards. Two switches in Settings set the language, and the robots both speak and listen in whichever you choose.

Signalling (on partner's lead).

Attitude (default) — a high spot card encourages the suit, a low one discourages. Playing the 8 from 8 3 2 says "keep going".
Reverse attitude — the same message inverted: low encourages, high discourages. Some pairs prefer it because it costs fewer high spot cards.

Discards (when you cannot follow suit).

Attitude — the card you throw shows interest in the suit you threw it from: high says "lead this", low says "not this".
Reverse attitude — inverted, as above.
McKenney (suit preference) — the size of the discard points at one of the other suits: a high card asks for the higher-ranking of them, a low card for the lower-ranking.

Two further signals are standard in most partnerships and are worth knowing even though there is no switch for them: count — playing high then low shows an even number of cards in a suit, low then high an odd number — and suit preference when giving partner a ruff, where the size of the card you lead for the ruff says which suit you want back.

Signals are information for partner, not commands. When the signal and your own reading of the hand disagree, trust the hand.