My family doesn’t often play bridge with just the four of us. When we do it almost always ends in tears (mine). One time we played on Christmas day. Like all good Jewish families, we had tickets for a 5 pm movie and dinner reservations for the local Chinese restaurant. However, by mid-morning my sister and I were already driving our parents nuts with our bickering.

They decided it would be a good idea to get out of the house (and away from each other) by going to the local bridge club. I would play with my mother, and my sister would play with my father. We started out against each other. On the very first board my sister opened 1NT on my right. My father bid 4NT and my sister went into the tank. She stared at her hand and shook her head. Then she sighed. Finally she bolted upright--a stroke of inspiration. She turned to me and, staring right at me, cracked a predatory grin. 6NT found its way to the table, her eyes never leaving mine.

Now came my turn to fret and worry. I finally closed my eyes and picked a card. Dummy came down and my sister showed her hand to claim--a bare minimum 15 points. “Why did you have to bid 6?,” I whined. She said, “I had a friend on lead.”

Most bridge players are pretty good when they get to play fourth to a trick. For example, with K4 in a suit; you aren't likely to take a trick when playing first or second, but you will ALWAYS win a trick with the king, either on the current trick or a subsequent one, if you play last.

There are thousands of scenarios where I’d rather play last. AQ is always two tricks if my LHO leads the suit. KQ10 is, also, always two tricks in that scenario. Sometimes, as declarer, I am happy if EITHER hand plays last to a trick. Imagine J32 opposite Q54… If I play the suit, than I am unlikely to take any tricks. If one of my opponents play the suit I will ALWAYS take a trick. That is the power of playing fourth.

It’s easy to think of the opponents as the enemy, but if they lead our suit… aren’t they really our friends?

Sometimes our friends don’t help us out on the opening lead (we can’t always play against our favorite opponents) and need a little prodding. Instead of doing all of the lifting ourselves, it’s important to think about how to get our friend or friends to lead a suit.

Try this hand:

Contract:4

Lead: Q

After winning the lead, you draw two rounds of trump and your RHO discards a heart on the second round. What is your plan?

First count losers on this hand (you should do that before playing to trick one), and since dummy has longer trumps start there. Dummy has one spade loser, no heart losers, no diamond loser and 3 potential club losers. You can hope that diamonds are 3-3 (about 30% of the time, they will be). You could also play for the ace of clubs to be in front of the king--that will happen 50% of the time. Better, though, would be if LHO had lead clubs originally. Maybe, however, you can still coerce them into playing clubs.

Many (dare I say most?) would simply play diamonds and then, when that fails, hope the ace of clubs was onside. Look what you can do though, if, before attacking diamonds, you play BOTH hearts.

If the diamonds are 3-3, you get rid of one of the clubs in dummy. If your opponent ruffs in, what can they do? Say they don’t ruff the 3rd diamond or the fourth (or they are 3-3).

Here is the position when you ruff the 4th diamond:

	54 - - 932
Q ? - ?		- ? - ?
	98 - - K64

Now, don’t play a club. Play a spade--your LHO is your friend. No matter what they do now, they give you a trick. If the fourth diamond was good, then you take 11 tricks, and if diamonds were 4-2, you will take 10.