This Week in Bridge Practice Hands
Advanced Card Play: Endplays in Suit and NT Contracts (Set 6 of 9)
Expert players look for ways to avoid taking a finesse. A finesse is usually a fallback plan that is taken only when no other line of play works. One way to avoid taking a finesse is to get the opponents to lead a suit for us. Of course, most opponents are not cooperative, and do not help us in this way, but there are times when we can force the opponents to lead a suit and accomplish what we want for us. One of the ways to get them to lead a suit is to put them on lead when they happen to have nothing but that suit remaining - but this does not happen all that often. Another way to accomplish this is to eliminate all the other suits and then put the opponents on lead, so they must lead what we want them to. This is a removal play (or stripping the hand) as it takes away the opponent’s other potential “exit” cards. Let’s see how to make this work.
You (and your partners) can sign up for Robert Todd's This Week in Bridge (TWiB) lesson emails for free at https://www.advinbridge.com/twib-signup This set accompanies TWiB 494.