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:
K♣ 8♣ 6♦
6♠ 5♠ 4♦
x-------x
| Y |
| |
| Z |
x-------x
A♣ Q♣ 5♣ 3♣
9♥ 7♥
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.