FORCING DISCARDS

Should you find as dealer that you have a losing card and a number of winning trumps, always lead the trumps to give the adversaries a chance to make an error in discarding.

If the adversary holds the ace, dummy the king, and you a singleton of a suit, your hand otherwise consisting of long trumps and established cards, by first leading the singleton you may tempt the second hand adversary to hold up the ace; while if you lead the established cards, the adversaries can count your hand and will make no such mistake.

Whenever you hold but six or seven cards of a suit in the combined hands, endeavour to make your adversaries discard before you indicate any strength. You will find that many times the discards will necessarily benefit your hand.

With two or three remaining trumps in your hand, you should lead at least two rounds of trumps before opening the suit of which you have but six cards. An example of the situation is given below:

In this case hearts are trumps. The dealer is left with the two remaining trumps, and holds in his combined hands but six clubs. Should the clubs be led before the trump suit, the adversaries would be left with the commanding club. The dealer should play his two trumps to force discards from his opponents’ hands before he opens the club suit.

With four or five long trumps, when but one other suit has been opened, you will almost invariably gain tricks by forcing the adversaries to discard. Any error they may make in selecting the suit to protect may enable you to take tricks with cards that would otherwise be valueless.