Growing up in a family of expert games players meant that I got accustomed to losing at a young age. It also meant that I’ve seen tactical thinking applied not just to actual games, but to various aspects of my upbringing as well. I look back now and can’t help but be impressed.

For example, my sister and I were the noisiest two children on the block. Between yelling during fights, yelling when we were playing and yelling for attention, there was always a cacophony in our home. That’s when my mom decided to teach us a new game. Most parents just try “the quiet game” as an excuse for a few seconds of silence, but my mom turned it into an art form. She would have us telling stories silently or cooperating to make complicated buildings out of Legos without a word. One time, we even mutely assembled an Ikea dresser sans instructions. My sister and I worked out a series of hand gestures and arm waves that could have made a very passable version of sign language.

Overall, my mom was pretty proud of her maneuvering. She was proud right until we played a family game of charades. The carnage was legendary, and the moral clear: if you allow your opponents to have clear lines of communication, you are going to be at a disadvantage.

Keep that in mind as you try to declare this contract:

Vul:None Dir: South	AK76 54 KJ104 432
	QJ984 A72 Q3 KJ10

West	North	East	South
			1
2	3	Pass	4
All Pass

Lead:K

The auction: After opening 1, you have to make a choice when partner cue-bids to show a good raise. With a reasonably nice 13-count (the 10 of clubs is a nice looking card), you'll guess to bet on yourself this time. Let's see if you deserve the confidence.

The play: Every suit-contract hand should be approached with the same process. First: count your losers. On this hand, you have two heart losers, one diamond loser and two potential club losers.

Second: what do you do about our losers? You can pitch your club or heart losers on the diamonds in dummy or you could try playing clubs ourselves and taking a finesse. Which of these is likely to work? Well, you can give up the idea of being able to throw away heart losers--the lead knocks your heart stopper out right away and the opponents will play the suit as soon as they win a trick. So the question is finesse or discard? You can always finesse if you have to, but it is much better to play to discard our clubs on the diamonds. Your third heart can be ruffed in dummy later on (assuming you don't have to draw four rounds of trump).

Third: when should you draw trump? Here, you are planning on playing winners (diamonds) so you should draw trump as soon as you can.

If you say “great--a plan” and start by winning the heart, drawing trump and playing a diamond you will find yourself down.

I like to add a fourth step: is there a danger lurking? Here you have information from the auction. The opening leader overcalled 2 showing an opening bid with five hearts. Your side isn’t missing many high card points so you should be concerned that the club finesse is losing. Why does that matter? If your right hand opponent gets the lead, she can lead a club through your hand. How can you stop that from happening?

If your right hand opponent has the A, then you can’t stop it. However, if the bidder has the ace (likely) then you can keep your RHO off the lead always. You just need to think ahead. The only suit where you might lose control is hearts, so you need to make sure your LHO wins the heart trick. How? On this first trick, your LHO is in position to win--let her. If you hold up here, then when you play diamonds, you can be sure that your LHO has no way to communicate with partner. When you have to lose a trick in a suit, consider whether you can control which side you lose to. If you don’t hold up, when you play a diamond LHO will win and play a low heart to her partner--how does she know to do that? Her partner will play the J at trick one. This play is a signal to communicate to partner that she also has the 10 (IT IS NOT a high/low from a doubleton; do not signal doubletons with an honor).

Here is the full deal:

Vul:None Dir: South	AK76 53 KJ104 432
3 KQ964 A72 AQ86		1052 J108 9865 975
	QJ984 A72 Q3 KJ10

You can hear Michael discuss declarer play more in this webinar series.

Updated: Dec 2022