Draw Those Trumps
Hi everyone, if you're beginning bridge this is a great hand to learn some simple bidding and card play.
Opening The Bidding
We are have 19 high card points. I can open 1♥, my longest suit, and North bids 2♥.
That 2♥ bid tells me that we have a heart fit, so we've got at least eight hearts between the two hands, and North is showing between six and nine points. So I'm in a really good position now to decide how high to bid, and this is a very common thing that happens with bridge bidding. One player shows their point count reasonably accurately, and then that person's partner can decide how high to bid.
Enough Points For Game
North is showing six to nine points. I've got 19, so we've got somewhere between 25 and 28 high card points. That's enough to bid 4♥, so nice and simple. Simple options are often the best!
Planning The Play
West leads the ♦3. First job here is going to be to get rid of the opposition's trumps.
I'm going to win the ♦K or the ♦A, doesn't matter which one. And notice that we have 10 hearts between the two hands, so the opposition have three. I'm going to play a low heart over to the king, and West discards the two of clubs. That's all fine, so that means East still has two hearts left, and you can see they're the ♥Q and ♥T. So when I play another heart, and East plays the ♥T, I'm guaranteed to win the trick here with the ♥J, because West has got no hearts left. I'm taking a finesse.
Establishing Tricks
After drawing trumps, the next thing I'm going to do is attack the club suit.
Why clubs? What we're going to do is lose the ♣A and ♣K early, while we've still got good cards in the other suits, and we can use those good cards in the other suits to regain the lead.
We play the ♣Q, ♣J, ♣T, doesn't matter which one, which will to lose to the ♣K or the ♣A, but we always had to lose to the ♣A and ♣K sometime. Whatever the opponents return we win and play another club.
Eventually our last club becomes a winner.