Bridge Lesson 8: Setting Up a Long Suit

To set up a long suit in bridge, you play it until the opponents have no cards left in it; after that, even your small cards in the suit are winners. A five-card suit facing three small cards usually gives you two extra tricks this way, as long as you can still reach the long hand at the end.

In lesson 7 you counted your sure winners. Often the count comes up short. The long suit is the first place to look for the missing tricks.

Take dummy's diamonds: ♦A K 7 4 3, opposite ♦6 5 2 in your hand, and say you have plenty of ways to reach dummy. Your side has eight diamonds, so the opponents have the other five.

1. Play the ♦A. Each opponent follows with one diamond, so three of their five are left.
2. Play the ♦K. Both follow again. Now only one diamond is out.
3. Play a third diamond. One opponent wins it with their last diamond. Now they have none.
4. Dummy's ♦4 and ♦3 are now winners. Nobody can follow suit, and with no higher diamond left anywhere, a three wins as surely as an ace.

So the suit gives four tricks: the ace, the king and two small cards. You lost one trick to set it up, and gained two. This is called establishing the suit.

The arithmetic is always the same: take your side's cards in the suit from 13 to get the opponents' cards, then count them as they fall. When the count reaches zero, every card you hold in the suit is a winner.

The way the opponents' cards divide between the two hands is called the split (or the break). It decides how many rounds you need. These are the real odds before you know anything about the deal:

Notice the rule behind the table: an odd number of missing cards tends to split as evenly as possible (5 cards: 3-2 most often), while an even number of four or more tends to split slightly unevenly (6 cards: 4-2 is more common than 3-3).

With five diamonds out and a 3-2 split, you need three rounds. With a 4-1 split you need four rounds, and dummy's suit gives one trick fewer. BridgeDummy's free suit break calculator gives the exact percentages for any number of missing cards, and the suit combinations guide shows how to play the harder holdings.

Count first. You need nine tricks. Sure winners: three spades, one heart, two diamonds and one club, a total of seven. The diamonds must give two more.

Now look at dummy's entries. An entry is a card that wins a trick and puts the lead in that hand. Dummy's only entries are the ♦A and ♦K. That changes everything:

• The wrong way: you win the ♥A and play the ♦A, the ♦K and a third diamond. The opponents win the third round, and dummy's two good diamonds are stranded. You can never reach them. Seven tricks.
• The right way: play a low diamond from both hands at once. This is called ducking. The defenders win this trick, the one you had to lose anyway. Later you lead a diamond to the ♦A, cash the ♦K, and the last two diamonds are winners while dummy still has the lead. Four diamond tricks and nine in all.

The defenders win the ducked diamond and can cash three heart tricks, but that is all they get: four tricks for them, nine for you. Reveal the hands and play it through.

When your sure winners fall short, ask two questions about each long suit:

1. How many tricks can it give? Count the opponents' cards and think about the likely split.
2. How will I get back to it? Count the entries to the long hand. If the high cards in the suit are its only entries, duck a round early.

These two questions solve a large number of notrump deals. They also explain why opening leaders so often lead their own longest suit: the defenders want to set up their long cards too. Read about that in what to lead against 3NT.

BridgeDummy's suit combination puzzles are made for this skill: you play one suit card by card against the best defense, and you see at once whether your line took the most tricks.

Previous: Lesson 7: Counting Your Winners. Next: Lesson 9: Your First Finesse, the other way to find an extra trick.