When the opponents open at the 3-level or 4-level they put a lot of pressure on us to make difficult decisions without much room to maneuver or describe our hand.  This preempt will force us to either double or overcall at a very high level – we will not have many of the options that are available to us at lower levels.  Let’s look at each of these options and see how we need to adjust our thinking and bidding because of the lack of space and options available to us. 

When the opponents open at the 3-level or 4-level they put a lot of pressure on us to make difficult decisions without much room to maneuver or describe our hand.  This preempt will force us to either double or overcall at a very high level – we will not have many of the options that are available to us at lower levels.  Let’s look at each of these options and see how we need to adjust our thinking and bidding because of the lack of space and options available to us. 

When it comes to taking tricks, immediate winners are our starting point.  Then come the winners that we can develop using Promotion, Length, or Finesse.  Here we look in detail at the technique of finesse.  A finesse is an act of taking a trick in a suit with a card that is not the “master” card in that suit.  We do this by taking advantage of the location of the card that is higher-ranking (by finessing against it).  A finesse usually requires a tenace of honors that allows us take advantage of a favorably located honor of the opponents (a holding like AQ with the King in front of it).  There are other kinds of finesses as well.  Let’s look at this method in detail.

When we declare a hand in a suit contact, we usually look at our number of losers.  We start by counting our certain losers (the ones we know we cannot avoid), then estimate our potential losers, and make a plan for trying to get rid of as many of our potential losers as possible.  We start by approximating our losers from the long trump side (which is frequently declarer’s hand). When we have potential losers in a side suit, one of the ways that we can get rid of these losers is by trumping them with the short side’s trump.  Ruffing losers in the short side is a useful declarer play technique and one we need to make sure to make use whenever possible.

When you can ruff one of Declarer’s tricks it is extremely satisfying. Here we work on techniques that will allow us to do so as often as possible!

Here we look at defensive situations in the middle of the hand - we start with a look at covering the opponent's honors -- which one to cover?

Attitude signals are some of the most important ways that we can communicate with our partner. Here we look at how to make them and when they apply so that we can work with partners effectively!

Once we learn the core techniques of NT declarer play, promotion, length, and finesse, then we need to develop the skills of implementing each of them to take tricks when they come up at the table.  But unfortunately, declarer play is not always as simple as finding one of these techniques and putting it to use. Sometimes we have multiple techniques to choose from, and we need to construct a line of play that is going to be successful. Let’s look at how each of these works.

When we declare in a notrump contract, we need to produce winners. We begin by counting our immediate winners, cards like Aces and Ace-Kings, that can be used to take a sure trick. We then turn our focus to how we can develop other cards into winners, called potential winners. The traditional methods for developing winners are Promotion, Length, and Finesse. These techniques are not certain to produce winners, but they give us a chance of producing additional tricks if lucky things happen for us. Here we look at each of these methods in detail to help us understand our options and determine when to make use of the different trick development techniques.

2 Over 1 Game Forcing (2/1 GF) bids are the core of a modern approach to bidding.  The primary idea is that when partner opens at the 1-level and we bid a new suit at the 2-level (not including jump shifts), this is a game forcing bid – meaning neither Opener nor Responder can pass below game.  This allows both players to confidently describe their hands – knowing that all their bids are forcing and they won’t get “dropped” before reaching game.

When we have a very strong hand we have a way to show it by opening the bidding 2C.

It is horrible to reach a slam and go down because you have poor trump. 1430 Keycard Blackwood is an improvement over traditional Blackwood that allows us to find out about both Aces and trump quality.

Getting the most out of the cards we hold is our goal when we are the Declarer or when we are defending a hand. That means we want to use our cards to allow us to take as many tricks as possible, while making it as difficult as possible for the opponents to take tricks. Let’s take a look at how we try to accomplish these feats based on when we play to a trick – our perspective will be different in each of these situations.

When we declare in a suit contract, there is a trump suit, and hopefully, we have more of these cards than the opponents (if not, please reconsider the bidding!) That means that when we gain the lead, we have the option of attempting to remove all of the opponents’ trump, or “draw trump.” Let’s look at our options and considerations for how and when to do this.

A long suit is a powerful asset, especially if it is a long, strong suit. When we declare, this type of suit can be established into winners in a variety of ways. Let’s look at some techniques for developing long suits, and then we should look at what we can do with the suit to help us take more tricks. Long suits are on many of the hands that we hold, so learning to make the best use of them is a key skill.

When we declare in a suit contract, then there is a trump suit, and hopefully, we have more of these cards than the opponents (if not, please reconsider your bidding). That means, when we gain the lead, we have the option of attempting to remove all of the opponent’s trump – draw trump. Let’s look at our options and considerations for how and when to do this.

When we declare a hand, especially in a Notrump contract, there are two common assets that help us produce tricks.  The first are our honor cards, which we quantify using High Card Points.  We normally use these honor cards as quick tricks or to capture the opponent’s honors.  The other way we usually take tricks is with long suits.  Long suits (especially strong ones) can be used to take tricks with their little cards by running the opponents out of cards in that suit.  When we declare a hand, we may have a long suit in our hand or in the dummy.  We can use either of these to establish additional tricks – often called length tricks.  Let’s look at how we try to set up these additional winners.

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.

When it’s our turn to play a card to a trick, then a key thing to consider is which player we are at the table. Are we playing to the trick first, second, third, or last? When we play to a trick, it affects our strategy for how we use our cards. There are some guidelines for what to “second hand low, third hand high”. Let’s look at the pros and cons of playing to a trick in each of the positions and see why these are suggestions for us.

When we run out of cards in a suit being played then we must discard. These discards are a great way to communicate with partner. Our first discard communicates a lot of information, but so do our subsequent discards. Here we look at making sure you are making good use of these discards.

In bridge there are many things to learn and to remember. We are often taxed in keeping too many things straight in our heads. But even more important than remembering any specific piece of information about how to play bridge is to have the “correct perspective” on the game – to be able to play bridge with the correct philosophical approach. If you approach each situation with the same set of philosophies, both you and your partner will be far more successful.

Here we look at our Ace asking tool for exploring slam in Notrump contracts (Gerber) and its upgrade - 1430 Gerber.

This week we look at one of my least favorite auctions in all of bridge: the minor suit 2/1 GF auction.

When our left-hand opponent opens the bidding and the auction passes around to us, we have a big decision to make – should we get into this auction, or should we leave the opponents to play at the 1-level? We have a variety of bidding tools to help us compete in the bidding, but we need to use our judgment about when to compete in the bidding and when to keep quiet.  Here we look at some of the classic bidding situations where we have a difficult decision and then overview some of our bidding tools in these auctions.

Our TWiB lesson is about Balancing NT and some other balancing options. We look at auctions where we can balance with 1NT with a wider range of values, and we look at what to do with some hands where 1NT isn't an option. 

Here we look at one of my favorite auctions, when we open the bidding and RHO overcalls. Rebids get interesting in this situation.

Here we look at how to play when we have multiple touching honors.  How to we play these different sequences in different situations can e very confusing.

Signaling with partner is an important part of working together to defend a hand. Attitude signals are extremely important, but so are count signals. Here we look at how to give them and more importantly, when they apply.

The type of Defense we choose to play is an important “high level” decision. Here we look at Active vs. Passive — two of the most important types of defense.

Understanding the meaning of the card that partner has led is a key part of defending property at trick 1.

This week we look at a useful tool for visualizing the opening lead - the Rule of 11.

Here we look at the fundamentals of Opening Leads — what to lead from different are combinations.

A 1NT opening is one of the best in all of bridge. There are classic hands that open we open 1NT, but there are also some slightly off-shape hands that are best to open 1NT. Here we look at those.

When partner preempts the bidding at a higher level, it puts a lot of pressure on both us and the opponents. Here we look at how to respond to partner’s higher-level preempts.

Here we look at how to investigate slam and involved partner by using a valuable bidding tool of control showing bids.

Knowing which Kings partner holds can be more important than how many. Here we look at how to use Specific Kings to explore for a grand slam.

When we interfere in the bidding and our partner (the Advancer) bids a new suit then when we have a fit we need to know our options for how to support them. We look at those options here.

When we are in a 2/1 GF auction, we have a variety of extremely useful slam bidding tools. Here we look at what these options are and how to best use them.

When partner makes a bid and we choose to bid a suit of our own, it is called a freebid. In most normal situations freebids show values (called positive freebids) and are often forcing 1-round. We’ve all heard the saying -- a new suit is forcing by an unpassed hand.  Unfortunately, this is not always true, but it is often our agreement. Let’s look at freebids made by a passed hand and see how the fact that we have already passed changes these situations.

A balancing 1NT bid can be a wide-ranging action, about 11-15/16 points. This 5-point range is much larger than most notrump bids and leaves partner with a more difficult bidding situation.  Range Stayman is a tool that can help Advancer better determine the values of our hand and if game is a possibility.

After partner opens 1NT, we have a good structure for using our bids efficiently to describe our hand to partner. When the opponents interfere in our auction, we lose some of this valuable bidding space and need to change our approach in order to deal with their interference.

It is time to look at some more common auctions: our NT openings and their NT openings.  We'll start with some ways of attacking their NT opening bids - DONT and Meckwell, bidding systems that allow us to be extremely active!

One of the most important parts of bridge is raising partner. We try to raise Opener whenever possible. We may choose not to support partner immediately if we feel we have something more pressing to communicate, in which case we can respond in our own Major, use a negative double, or bid some number of notrump, but in general we strive to “support with support.”

When LHO opens the bidding and the auction passes around to partner they may balance back into the bidding. Once they do so, we need to know our options for how to raise their suit. Here we see how!

After we respond with a suit, if LHO overcalls we need to have some good agreements about the meaning of our rebids.

Here we look at Opener’s Rebids after Responder makes a positive freebid of a new suit.

When declaring in a suit contract, one of the most exciting ways to win tricks is to trump with our small trump. This is especially satisfying when we can trump the opponent’s honor cards – like their Aces and Kings!  If we do this ruffing in both our hand and in the dummy, then we can do some significant damage to the opponent’s potential winners.  Let’s see how we can use the technique to take as many tricks as possible.

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.

Here we look at little cards that have potential to become winners and start to learn to make better use of them.

Learning to interpret the opponent’s discards is an important skill. In order to do so you must visualize the opponent’s hands. Here we learn how to use the idle 5th concept to help us do so.

Finding a fit makes declaring a hand much easier. When we are playing a hand without a fit it is much more challenging. Here we look at some strategies for playing hands that have less than an 8-card fit.

When we are defending and the Declaring side holds the King and the Jack in a suit then they will often have to guess the layout of the suit in order to take their most tricks. Here we look at the art of giving them the most difficult guesses we can!

Having the right mindset is an important part of approaching a declarer play problem. When you are in a good contact start to consider “What could go wrong?!?” and when you are in a bad contract start to make assumptions that good things are going to happen for you!

Finding the best line of play as Declarer is always a challenge. Instead of trying to determine the better of line of play A and line of play B the best play is often to choose a combination of the two. Here we look at how to improve you declarer play by combining your chances.

Should we return partner’s lead? Show we shift to a different suit? This is always a difficult decision! Here we look at how to make this decision and help our partnership take the tricks we are entitled to.

In order to defend well you have to work together with partners. Specific agreements are important, but “high-level” agreements are also important. Your philosophy on how we work together and how we signal is the most important part of this.

When Dummy has a holding like Qxx (or longer) it is important to have good agreements about signaling our partner, so they can make a good decision about what to do next. This week we look at this situation in detail - attitude, count, suit preference, what does our card mean!?!

Our goal on defense is to help our partner. Suit Preference Signals are a way to do this by giving painter information about which suit we would like them to shift to (or where we hold good stuff).

When defending a hand it is important to try to visualize the layout of the suit around the table. This is helps guide us in determining whether to be active or passive on defense.

Once we know how to be active and how to be passive on defense, then we need learn how to recognize the signs that tell us that we need to attack!

When partner bids we usually lead their suit. Here we look at when we should lead partner’s suit and when we should consider leading something else.

We often lead partner’s suit. It is extremely important for us to have good agreements about this situation. Let’s take a look in detail.

When we agree to play 2/1 GF as our bidding system, then that is not the end of our decision-making process. We need to discuss our follow-up bidding and other initial agreements. The goal is this article is to give you a list of questions to discuss with your partners, to make sure that you are getting the most out of your 2/1 GF system. Let’s start out with a list of the question and then we’ll do some discussions of options below.

2/1 bids are game-forcing as part of our constructive bidding system. But when we are in a competitive bidding system things change. Here we look at how 2/1 bids change in competition.

When we are in a game forcing auction and the opponents interfere (usually to sacrifice) it is clear that we are not going to go quietly and just let them steal the contract. If the opponents bid over us, then we will either double them and defend or bid on to our game. Forcing Pass is an agreement used to help us work together with partner to make a good decision about which to do.

When partner bids in the sandwich seat we have some more complexity about the ways we can raise partner. Here we look at these options.

When partner makes a simple overcall in the direct seat then as Advancer we have a variety of ways to raise their suit. Here we look at our options.

Here we look at how we defend in the middle of the hand, with a focus on leading a new suit -- how and when to do so! 

As a defender, one way to use our trump is to try and get a ruff. But another way is to force the Declarer to ruff and try to take control of the hand -- this forcing defense is a powerful strategy.

When we are defending a hand we need to know if we should fear our tricks going away. In order to determine this, we need to be able to recognize if danger exists or not. Here we look at how to do so.

A key way to make defense simpler is to assume that the declarer is logical. Here we look at how you make assumptions on the defense that make your job much easier!

There are some unusual leads that partner makes, in NT some of these show extremely powerful holdings. Here we look at them.

When the opponents are playing in a partscore, there are many options for what the best lead could be. We need to listen to the auction and try to figure out what is going on.

When the opponents bid slam, it is extremely important that we get off to the best opening lead. Here we look at how we make this decision.

This week we look at how we adjust our thinking about opening leads when leading against a 5-minor contract.

When the opponents bid to 4M there are often many bids to help us determine the best opening lead. Here we look at how to make use of this information.

When we are on lead against 3NT, we need to know more than just “4th from our longest and strongest” to make a good opening lead.

Here we look at how to think about making an opening lead into a strong balanced (NT) opening bid.