The more bridge we play, the more we run into situations in the play that frustrate us – where we feel that we always get things wrong. In compliment to that, we may find certain card combinations where we know we end up with good boards if they appear.  For many players this involves whether they lose a trick to the trump Queen or not!  There is a particular card combination that I find elegant – it has resulted in many good results for me over the years.  Let’s take a look at my favorite card combination and make sure we have it in our skill set.

Some players find declarer play to be fun, while others find it infuriating.  Often this has to do with what we feel is the strength of our game:  Are we best at Bidding, Declarer Play, or Defense?  But one of the ways to improve our Declarer Play is to adopt the right mindset during the play.  This is not just about having confidence in our play (which is always helpful), but also about thinking about the right thing at the right time.  When it appears that we are going to make our contact, then that is the time for us to start thinking about “What could go wrong?” and then about “What can I do about it?”  These are extremely powerful and helpful question to ask ourselves.  What this type of thinking leads to is an extremely useful type of play, the Safety Play!  Let’s look at these plays and see how they can help us improve our declarer play.

Active opening leads attempt to "go out and get" our tricks. Passive leads, on the other hand, attempt to just not give anything away or help Declarer. There are many different types of passive leads for many different situations. Here we take a look at several lead types and hands where a passive lead may or may not have the intended effect!

Declarer likes to try to win tricks with their little cards — setting up their length. As a defender it is our job to try to prevent this from happening. The way we do so is by keeping the cards in their long suits, called guarding a suit.

We usually win tricks with little cards (other than in the trump suit) by setting up our long suits. To establish these little cards in our long suits into winners, we need to play the hand well.  This requires using our large cards in the best way possible to establish our little cards. That means we need to play our combinations as best as we can, manage our transportation, and have some good luck in the way the cards divide. Let’s see how we can properly manage our cards to take our tricks.

Our first discussion on card play is how to get the most out of the best card in every suit - the Ace! There are a variety of ways for the Ace to help us and here we look at how to get the most out of this important card.