target="_blank" rel="nofollow" href="#litres_trial_promo">Tip 142).
VERSUS NOTRUMP CONTRACTS Leading ‘fourth from the top of your longest – and strongest – suit’ against notrumps is the oldest maxim of all, dating back to the pre-Bridge days of whist. But do not be a slave to it. If your longest suit is headed by three touching high cards, or two then a gap of one card before a third, lead the top card (Tip 143). Similarly, lead top of an internal sequence (Tip 144). When leading from a long weak suit, lead a high card (‘lead high for hate’) rather than the fourth from the top, to discourage a continuation from partner (Tip 145).
After the Lead
‘TOP’ DEFENCE Be a ‘TOP’ defender. The ‘T’ stands for Trick Target. Never lose sight of how many tricks you need to defeat the contract. If you only need one more trick and have an ace to lead, lead it (Tip 146). The ‘O’ of being a ‘TOP’ defender stands for Observe Dummy. When in doubt, look for dummy’s weakest suit (Tip 147). It is almost never right to lead dummy’s long, strong suit (Tip 148), even if you are leading through dummy rather than around to it. The ‘P’ of being a ‘TOP’ defender stands for Partner. Ask yourself what (on earth!) is he doing – and try to follow his defence (Tip 149).
SECOND AND THIRD HAND PLAYS On a low card, the defender playing second should generally play low (Tip 150). But he should usually cover an honour with an honour (Tip 151), because he is drawing out two opposing high cards for one of his. However, he should wait to cover the second of two touching honours (Tip 152).
When you are playing third to the trick, partner has already played a card (the lead). You need to play high, in order to prevent declarer from winning a cheap trick (Tip 153). With touching highest cards, you should play the lower (Tip 154). Partner (i.e. the leader) can draw valuable inferences from this (Tip 155). If dummy has an (unplayed) picture card, however, you should generally keep a higher card to beat that card (Tip 156). If dummy plays an honour on partner’s lead, it will generally be correct for you to cover with a higher card, unless there is no hope of promoting a lower card (Tip 157).
SIGNALLING When you are leading (the first round of each suit), the motto (for spot cards i.e. nine and below) is ‘Lead High for Hate, Lead Low for Like’ (Tip 158). When throwing, however, either on partner’s lead or when discarding, the motto is ‘Throw High means Aye, Throw Low means No’ (Tip 159). Although the seven, eight and nine are usually high, and two, three and four usually low, you may have the wrong spot cards to convey the desired message; so partner must scrutinise the spot cards carefully before decoding your message (Tip 160). Also, avoid knee-jerk signals – such as playing top from two. First ask yourself whether you really want him to continue (Tip 161).
The signals we have been discussing are referred to as ‘Attitude Signals’ – giving your attitude to the suit partner led. Although they are by far the most important, giving ‘count’ on a suit declarer is leading can be crucial (Tip 162). The mnemonic for the Count Signal is HELO: High = Even; Low = Odd (Tip 163).
A final signal to add to your repertoire is the ‘Suit Preference Signal’, best limited (at least initially) to situations where you are leading a suit for partner to trump. The lead of a high spot card asks for the return of the higher-ranking suit; and the lead of a low spot card asks for the return of the lower-ranking suit (Tip 164). Forget it at your peril (Tip 165).
DISCARDING When you cannot follow suit (and cannot/do not wish to trump), you must discard. You have twin goals: (1) to keep the right cards in order to prevent declarer from scoring extra tricks which he should not be allowed to make (more important when declarer is on lead) and (2) to send the right message to partner (more important when partner is on lead).
Focussing on keeping the right cards, various principles will help, such as ‘keep equal length with dummy’ (Tip 166). Try to work out declarer’s shape, so you can keep equal length with him too (Tip 167). If the defence need to keep two suits, then each defender should guard a different one (Tip 168). When declarer is running off a long suit, try not to void yourself of a suit or, when you reveal your absence of cards, the remainder will be marked with partner (Tip 169).
Moving to sending the right message to partner, you have a choice of throwing high in a suit you want him to lead (Throw High means Aye); or low in a suit you do not want him to lead (Throw Low means No). Particularly in notrumps, it will generally be right to preserve the suit you want led and to throw low in a suit you do not want (Tip 170). But make your discard count – do not throw low from a suit partner was never going to lead (Tip 171); and discard the clearest card you can (Tip 172).
SUMMARY Defence is more than observing mottoes such as ‘second hand low’ and ‘third hand high’. TOP defence involves focussing on the number of tricks needed to beat the contract, looking at dummy to see from where those tricks are coming, and, especially, co-operating with partner in the joint quest.
Deal 1
I am an advocate of the Rule of 20, which says that the bidding should be opened when the number of points in the hand added to the number of cards in the two longest suits gets to twenty or more.
What happened
At the table our first deal was actually passed out. Would you have opened any of the four hands?
What should have happened
South
