Card combinations

Suit combinations, taught

One suit, your cards and dummy's, and the line that takes the most tricks. Each lesson is a handful of screens: a little to read, then a board to play or a question to answer. Nothing is scored and nothing is timed — a wrong card is refused and explained, and you try it again.

A suit combination is your cards in one suit and dummy's, played on their own: no trumps to worry about, no other suit to lose, just the question of how to take as many tricks from these thirteen cards as the contract needs. It has a right answer, and unlike most of bridge the right answer can be computed exactly — which is what makes it worth learning properly rather than by rule of thumb.

The order below is the order to read them in. It is a recommendation and nothing more: the odds come first because every later argument counts on them, and the techniques build on each other, but nothing is locked and a strong player can start wherever they like. The first three lessons are free. The last screen of the course is an exam of forty-eight positions, one life each.

Already know the ideas? The day's combination is a single problem on one life, and the reference table holds the best line for every combination there is.

  1. 1Why not maximise expected tricks

    4 steps

    The objective the whole subject answers to — the chance of taking the tricks your contract needs, which is not the same as taking as many as you can.

  2. 2How suits break

    5 steps

    Every suit-combination argument starts here: how the outstanding cards divide, and why 3-2 being 68% decides so many of them.

  3. 3The finesse

    5 steps

    Leading towards a card that is not the highest out, and the four holdings that teach the shape of it.

  4. 4The double finesse

    5 steps

    Two finesses through the same defender, each for a different card — and why three holdings that look nothing alike all come to seventy-six per cent.

  5. 5Dropping

    4 steps

    When to play for a missing honour to fall rather than finessing for it, why an unsupported honour is no finesse at all, and what eight-ever-nine-never counts.

  6. 6Leading toward honours

    4 steps

    A finesse is led towards the card you hope will win, never away from it — the half of the technique that decides which of your two hands plays first.

  7. 7Chinese finesse or not

    5 steps

    Running an honour that a cover would refute — worth nothing on one holding and half the suit on the same holding plus a ten.

  8. 8Finessing the short hand

    4 steps

    The lesson that reverses the rule: two holdings best played by leading from the long hand, so a defender has to spend an honour under the short one.

  9. 9Pinning

    4 steps

    Forcing a short honour out cheaply, and squashing a defender's middle card under a higher one so that a finesse against their partner becomes available.

  10. 10Safety play

    4 steps

    Giving up a trick you do not need to remove the chance of losing one you do — including a holding that is certain for three and a coin flip for four.

  11. 11Managing entries

    3 steps

    Two holdings whose answer changes the moment you cannot reach dummy at will — the only lesson priced under an entry budget rather than free crossings.

  12. 12The intra-finesse

    4 steps

    Finessing one defender for a card in order to create a finessing position against the other — and the winner worth cashing before you start.

  13. 13The same cards, a different target

    5 steps

    Two holdings played twice each: certain for three tricks, forty-one per cent for four, and a different first card at each. The whole course in one screen.

14The exam

48 questions

Every position in the notes' own exercise set, one life each. Nothing is timed, and you may take it as often as you like.

Sit the exam

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