This Week in Bridge
(612) Fundamentals of Trick Taking – Quick Tricks, Promotion, Ruffs
© AiB Robert S. Todd
Level: 3 of 10 robert@advinbridge.com
General
Learning to take tricks is a key part of developing our card play skills. There are a large number of techniques for taking tricks, and it is important to be able to use these to help our side collect our winners. Let’s look at some of these fundamental techniques.
Quick Tricks
A Quick Trick (QT) is a card that can immediately win a trick, without having to give up the lead. QTs are some of the oldest metrics used to determine the quality of a hand (a long time ago, an opening hand was one with 3 quick tricks).
Example 1 – Summary of Quick Tricks
Ace 1 QT
AK 2 QT
AQ 1.5 QT
Quick tricks are useful tools for winning tricks quickly.
Promotion
Promotion is the first skill we learn to develop additional tricks. Promotion is the act of sacrificing a card (usually an honor card) to force the opponents to spend their larger card in a suit. In doing so, we develop another of our cards into the new master card in that suit – a winner!
Example 2
KQ xx
We lead the King (or Queen) to knock out the opponent’s Ace and promote the Queen into a winner.
Example 3
Kx Qx
We again lead the King (or Queen) to dislodge the opponent’s Ace and promote the remaining honor into a winner.
Example 4
KQJ xxx
We lead the King (or Queen, or Jack) to dislodge the opponent’s Ace and promote two winners.
Example 5
QJT xxx
We lead one of the honors (say the Queen) to knock out one of the opponent’s high honors (Ace or King). Later, we lead another honor (say the Jack), and knock out the second of the opponent’s honors, finally developing our third-round winner in this suit.
One of the advantages of promotion is that it is certain to develop a winner for our side. One of the complexities is that we must surrender the lead by giving the opponents their win. This makes promotion effective when we have time to develop our tricks and ineffective when the opponents have a source of tricks to take if we allow them to gain the lead.
Ruffing
Another powerful tool for winning tricks (in a suit contract) is to use our little trump to capture the opponents’ honor cards – called ruffing their winners. This stops the opponents from continuing to take winners in their suit. Sometimes this is a fabulous play technique, producing additional trump tricks, while other times it can be a negative. When we ruff, if we use up our trump in the “long side”, then we shorten our trump and leave ourselves susceptible to losing control of the hand if the trump split poorly. Ruffing in the long side often just shifts a later trump trick to a more immediate one; it does not usually produce additional trump tricks.
Conclusion
Winning a trick is extremely satisfying. There are many methods for producing tricks, but these are some of the most immediate ones. Quick Tricks, Promoting Winners, and Ruffing all produce tricks and do so quickly. These techniques often allow us to gain control or maintain it. Make sure that you feel comfortable with how to use these techniques and learn how to combine them with your other card play skills.