Playing the cards
Defensive card play
Defence is the half of bridge where most tricks go missing, and not because it is mysterious — because three or four working rules were never learned, and because the people who learned them were never told when they are wrong.
Second hand low
When declarer leads a small card and you are next to play, play low. Your partner plays last to the trick and can beat whatever comes.
Playing an honour early gives declarer two chances instead of one: they may win with a card that would have been beaten by partner anyway.
Play high instead when:
- The trick sets the contract. Rules stop mattering when the trick is the last one you need.
- Dummy has a long suit about to be established and this is your last chance to take an ace.
- Playing low lets a singleton or doubleton honour in dummy win a trick it did not deserve.
- You can see the trick is yours — a bare ace over dummy's king, say.
Third hand high
When partner leads and dummy plays low, play your highest card. You are the last line of defence on the trick, and a cheap card just donates it to declarer.
With touching honours, play the lower — from Q J, play the jack. If it loses to the king, partner knows you hold the queen. The higher card would have told them nothing.
Play lower than your highest when:
- Dummy's card is already high enough to beat. Beat what is played, not what you fear.
- The rule of 11 says you need not. If partner led fourth-highest and the arithmetic proves declarer has nothing above your ten, play the ten.
- Dummy has an honour you are sitting over. Keep it guarded and let declarer come to you.
Cover an honour with an honour
When declarer leads an honour, covering can promote a card in your side's hands. Declarer leads the queen, you cover with the king, and partner's jack or ten may be promoted.
The rule is right when covering can promote something. It is wrong when it cannot, and the two are distinguishable at the table.
Do not cover when:
- It is the first of touching honours. Dummy holds Q J 10 — cover the second one. Covering the queen lets declarer run the rest.
- Nothing can be promoted. If dummy's honours are backed by enough length, your king is falling under the ace whatever you do.
- You would be covering a singleton honour in dummy with nothing behind it.
Discarding, where the hands are really lost
More contracts are handed over on discards than on any of the rules above, because discarding feels like doing nothing.
- Your first discard is a signal. It says whether you like that suit — see defensive signals.
- Do not bare an honour. A king thrown down to a singleton is a trick given away.
- Keep length with dummy. If dummy has four of a suit, keeping four stops the fourth card being a winner. This is what declarer is trying to make you abandon.
- Count before you throw. Work out which suit is genuinely worthless rather than which is most comfortable to let go.
What sits underneath all of it
These rules are shortcuts for a defender who has not counted. A defender who has does not need most of them.
If you know declarer began with five spades and three hearts, you know whether ducking is safe without consulting a rule about second hand. Counting the hand is the skill these approximate.
Learn the rules, use them while you are learning to count, and outgrow them.