Bridge Lesson 2: Tricks and Following Suit

A trick in bridge is one round of play: each of the four players plays one card, going clockwise, and the highest card of the suit that was led wins all four cards. You must follow suit if you can, and the player who wins a trick leads to the next one.

That is nearly all the play of the cards. This lesson goes through each rule slowly, with a real deal, so you can play your first hand tonight. If you missed it, lesson 1 explains the four seats and the deal.

One player leads: they put any card from their hand face up on the table. Then the other three players each play one card, in clockwise order. Those four cards are one trick.

The trick is won by the highest card of the suit that was led. If West leads the ♠5 and the other players put down the ♠9, the ♠Q and the ♠2, the ♠Q wins. A card of a different suit cannot win, however high it is. The ♥A does nothing on a spade trick (in this lesson we play without trumps, the special suit you meet in lesson 3).

Each player has 13 cards and plays one card per trick, so every deal has exactly 13 tricks. The whole aim of the play is to win as many of those 13 as your side can. A trick won by your partner counts the same as a trick you won yourself.

The most important rule of the play: if you have a card in the suit that was led, you must play one. This is called following suit. You may play any card of that suit, high or low, but you may not play another suit while you still hold one.

If you play a different suit when you could have followed, that is a revoke. It is the most common mistake of new players, and it costs: once the revoke is found, the director usually moves one or two tricks to the other side. Our page on the revoke explains the exact rules. Sorting your hand well and looking at it before each card is the best way to avoid one.

When you have no card of the suit that was led, you are free to play any card from your hand. In a game without trumps this card is a discard: it cannot win the trick, because it is not of the suit led. Throw away a card you do not need, usually a low card in a suit you cannot win tricks in.

Choosing discards is a skill of its own. Keep cards that can still win tricks, and keep the suits your partner may need. For now one point is enough: a discard never wins, so do not waste a high card on it.

We play this deal with no trump suit, so only the suit led can win a trick. West makes the first lead.

Trick 1. West leads the ♠K. North has spades and must follow: North plays the ♠4. East plays the ♠2. South plays the ♠A, the highest spade, and wins the trick.

Trick 2. South won, so South leads. South leads the ♥K. West follows with the ♥2 and North with the ♥3. East has no hearts at all (look at the diagram), so East may play any card and throws away the ♦2. That card cannot win. South's ♥K is the highest heart, so South wins again.

Trick 3. South leads the ♥4. West plays the ♥5, North wins with the ♥A, and East discards again, this time the ♣9.

Trick 4. North won trick 3, so now North leads. North leads the ♦K, East follows with the ♦4, South with the ♦7 and West with the ♦3. North's king wins.

Look at what happened. Whoever won the trick always led to the next one. East could not follow to hearts and discarded, and the discards won nothing. South's partnership has won four tricks in a row, two of them in North's hand and two in South's, and all four count for North-South.

The rule is short: the winner of a trick leads to the next trick. It can be any card, of any suit.

At home you collect the four cards of each trick into a neat pile face down in front of you or your partner (one player of each side keeps the pile). In a club game nobody collects: you keep your own card in front of you, turned face down. Point the long side of the card toward your partner and you if your side won the trick, and sideways if the opponents won it. At the end, a quick look at your row of cards tells you how many tricks your side took, and the cards can go back into the board for the next table.

Keep count as you go. Thirteen tricks is a small number, and at every moment you should know how many your side has won and how many you still need. This habit grows into the key skill of counting your winners, lesson 7.

Run through this short list each time it is your turn to play:

1. What suit was led? Do I have a card of it? If yes, I must follow.
2. Can my side win this trick? If partner is already winning it, play low and save my high cards.
3. If I cannot follow, which card can I throw away without losing a trick later?
4. Who won? That player leads next. Add the trick to the count.

The quickest way to make these rules automatic is to play. MiniBridge on BridgeDummy deals you hands against robots and will not let you play a card that breaks the follow-suit rule, so you learn it without a single revoke. After each deal it explains the score.

Previous: Lesson 1: Four Players, Two Partnerships. Next: Lesson 3: Trumps, the suit that beats all the others.