One Good Tip Leads To Another 

Eddie Kantar’s republished book Take Your Tricks, 550 Bridge Tips You Can Take to the Bank (Squeeze Books, Vivisphere Publishing, Poughkeepsie, N.Y.)  has one more basic tip designed to make it harder for the opponents on defense to figure out what partner holds by figuring out what declarer holds. 

As declarer, you have three to the king in a particular suit and four to the ace-queen-jack in dummy and you want to go to the dummy. 

What card do you lead to? 

Keep in mind, that the opponents have a fairly good idea of the overall strength of your hand from the bidding and are slowly trying to work out by inference where your high cards are so they can better plan their defense. You want to throw them off. 

If you blithely lead to the ace, you have clearly placed the king in your hand. If instead you lead to the queen, your right hand opponent will likely think you are finessing and put the king in his partner’s hand. Left hand opponent is less likely to be fooled, but it is still possible he could think his partner is holding up the king one round. 

Here is another tip that is not specifically in the book, but it sprang to mind upon thinking of Kantar’s tip. 

There are many opportunities in the play of the hand to throw the opponents off balance. 

Suppose, regardless of whether you are playing in notrump or a suit, you have a side suit of three to the ace (with no spots) in dummy and three to the queen-jack in your hand. 

Let us further suppose that you aren’t getting any pitches, so you are going to have to play out this suit. Unless you get lucky, you are going to lose a trick in the suit, whether the king is on side or off side. 

Now suppose you have to play the suit yourself. You could just play the ace, hoping for a singleton king. Not very likely. If you lead the queen and left hand opponent has the king, he will surely cover, and now surely, someone’s ten sets up. 

You could get crafty and lead the jack, making it look like you have jack-ten. Left hand opponent holding king-doubleton, should still cover, but every once in a while, someone goofs and doesn’t. Then playing to the ace drops the king and your queen is good. 

Is this likely to work? No. But playing for a defensive error may be a better bet than looking for a singleton king with seven cards out. 

More interesting things can happen if the opponents start the suit. 

Again, same combination. You have three to the queen-jack in your hand opposite ace-third in dummy. Suppose you are in three notrump and left hand opponent leads this suit from four to the king. You call low from dummy, right hand opponent contributes the ten, and what card do you win with, the queen or the jack? 

There is no need to win the trick "cheaply" with the lowest of touching honors. They are equivalent. But they are not psychologically equivalent. 

If you win with the jack, left hand opponent will know you have the queen, since his partner would have played it if he had it (third hand high). If he gets in again he will not lead away from his king again. 

But if you win the queen, the position of the jack is unclear. You might have it. But left hand opponent when he next gets in, may get optimistic and hope his partner played the ten from jack-ten, and lead the suit again. Now you get all three tricks in the suit. 

Leftie has been duped, but not unreasonably so. If he gets in again, he may view leading some other suit as even more dangerous than hoping partner has that one crucial jack. 

Even when you think it doesn’t make a difference what card you win a trick with, it can make a difference.