Drawing Trumps

When you are declarer in a suit contract, your general strategy is often to draw trumps first. This means to lead trumps until your opponents do not have any more. You have to count to do this so that you know how many trumps the opponents have at all times.

After drawing trumps you work on getting winners out of the rest of your hand, and you can do this without worrying that the opponents are going to stick it to you by trumping your winners. Here is a typical example.

Suppose you are in 4H and the opponents cash three rounds of diamonds, then switch to a club. Counting winners, you see 5 spades, 6 hearts and a club. While that's 12 tricks, unfortunately the opponents have already taken three, so you can only take ten tricks. It's time to draw trumps so that you can enjoy those winners without the opponents trumping in. Play as many high hearts as you need to exhaust the opponents (you and your partner have nine hearts between you, so the opponents have four). Let us suppose they split 2-2. Next cash the ace of spades, play a low spade to the dummy, and discard your last club on one of dummy's spades. At that point, you are left with:

You know your opponents are out of hearts, so you may at this point face your hand and state that you have the rest. That is called claiming.

Here is another example:

Now you're in 1H (part score in hearts). West leads the ace of diamonds, and his partner plays the two, showing that he doesn't have any cards in diamonds. West however, is not paying attention, and continues with the king of diamonds and a third diamond which you win. Count your tricks. You have won a diamond, and you have five winners in the black suits. Once you lose the ace of hearts, you will have all heart winners. You should draw trumps. Yes, you will lose the AH, but you can win any return, then draw the remaining trumps and take all those winners. You will discard your two losing clubs on dummy's spades and end up with 10 tricks overall for +170.

Note how west could have made a huge difference by watching his partner's signal on the first diamond. If he switches to a club, then declarer has issues. If declarer attempts to draw trumps, then whoever wins the ace can negotiate winning two more clubs and a diamond. Declarer will make 8 tricks for just +110.

When Not To Draw Trump #1: You need to get rid of losers before the Opponents take them

Continuing from the last example. Suppose west leads the ace of diamonds and switches to a club. As detailed above, drawing trumps leads to +110. Instead, you should play on spades before touching trumps and discard a losing club on dummy's third spade. You may as well discard a second club on dummy's last spade too (one opponent will trump this, but it cannot hurt). You will get +140 rather than +110, and that's worth something.

Defensive note: I'll hammer this home -- not how important it was for west to switch to a club at trick #2. How does west know to do this? He looks at his partner's signal -- a low diamond at trick one means partner wants a switch. A high diamond means to continue diamonds.

When Not To Draw Trump #2: You need to trump losers in the dummy

Consider the following hand. You are in 4S.

West leads the ten of clubs. You cover with the jack and east wins the queen and returns a trump, which of course you win in hand. What now? Should you draw trump?

The answer is no. As always, count your tricks. You have six spades, one heart and one diamond. You may have a club winner or two, but suppose east has the ace. In that case, you are winning zero clubs. That's a total of eight tricks and you need ten. Where are those other two tricks coming from? The answer is that dummy can ruff two hearts for a total of ten tricks. However, dummy can't do that if you draw trumps.

You should play the ace of hearts and trump a heart. Cross back to your hand with the ace of diamonds and trump another heart. You've taken five tricks and have five good trumps left in your hand -- pretty much nothing else matters - you've made your contract!

Here are all four hands in case you'd like to go over it in detail:

When Not To Draw Trump #3: The opponents only have one trump, and it's high

While there are other reasons not to draw trump, this is the last one I'll go over today. Suppose you are in 4H with the following hands:

West leads the king of clubs, which you win with the ace. Count your tricks: two spades, probably four hearts (supposing that they split 3-2), seven diamonds and one club. That's 14 tricks! Of course, you can't take that many, and in particular, you are going to have to lose at least one heart.

You would like to be able to draw trumps and lead those lovely diamonds. However, you have a trump loser. To handle this, cash the ace and king of hearts, and hopefully both opponents follow. When they do, it will be disastrous if you lead another heart. Dummy will be out of hearts, so the opponent who wins the last heart can cash as many clubs as he and his partner have, and you will never be able to reach the dummy again to play diamonds.

Instead, when there is only one trump left and it is the high one, it is usually best not to draw it. Make the opponent ruff in. In this hand, you simply start running diamonds and pitching clubs. When the opponent ruffs in, she can try to lead a club, but dummy still has a heart left and and ruff, and continue the onslaught of diamonds. You will make 12 tricks easily.

This is an important principle -- leave the last high trump out. If the opponent has to trump to beat your winners, then at least you did not have the play extra trump to get him/her to do so.