Choosing the contract - trumps or no-trumps?

As explained in the video, the partnership that has the most high card points between them will be the declaring side and the other partnership will be the defenders. The player with the stronger hand on the declaring side will be the declarer and will need to choose a contract to play in. First, you will need to decide whether to play with a trump suit or to play in no-trumps.

You should usually only choose a trump suit in which you have at least 8 cards between your hand and the dummy. If you have two long suits between your hands, think about major and minor suits. Remember that tricks in major suits score more than tricks in minor suits and that you only need to make ten tricks for game in a major suit, but 11 in a minor. You will particularly want to play in a trump suit if there is one suit where your opponents might take lots of tricks because they have most or all of the high cards.

Here are a few examples:

Example 1.

Dummy: ♠ T 6 ♥ 9 8 5 4 ♦ K Q 4 2 ♣ A K 6

Your hand. ♠ 7.3 ♥ A Q T 3 ♦ A 9 7 5 ♣ Q T 7

With these hands, you would choose hearts as trumps. You have eight of them between your hand and dummy, so that’s good. You also have eight diamonds but they are a minor suit so it’s better to choose the major suit. You would definitely not want to play in no-trumps on this hand because the defenders can take lots of tricks in spades - your spade holdings in both hands are very weak.

Example 2.

Dummy: ♠ A 6 ♥ 9 8 5 ♦ K Q 4 2 ♣ A K 6 4

Your hand. ♠ K.3 ♥ A Q T 3 ♦ A 9 7 5 ♣ Q T 7

With these hands, you do have an eight card suit, but it’s a minor suit. When your long suit is a minor, it’s often better to play in no-trumps, as the trick score is higher and you need fewer tricks to make a game contract. So here, where you have no suit that is very weak, you should choose to play in no-trumps.

Example 3.

Dummy: ♠ Q 5 ♥ 9 8 5 ♦ Q T 2 ♣ A K 8 6 3

Your hand. ♠ 7.3 ♥ Q 3 ♦ A K 7 5 3 ♣ Q T 7 5

Here, however, it would be very unwise to choose to play in no-trumps. There are two suits - hearts and spades - in which your opponents could clearly take lots of tricks so even though your longest suit is a minor, you should sill choose it to play in a trump suit. With eight diamonds between your hands and nine clubs, you would choose clubs as trumps.

Choosing the contract - game or part score?

The second choice you have to make as declarer is whether to go for the big bonus that comes with a game contract or settle for a safer part score. When playing Level 2 bridge we start out with just those two options. You will have seen in the Module 4 video on scoring, that it is possible to play in different levels of part score contract, such as 2♠ or 4♦ and in later versions of the game, where you compete for the role of declarer by ‘outbidding’ your opponents, you will move on to doing that. For now, though, as the role of declarer is assigned, there is no advantage to having a contract of say 3♠, rather than 1♠ because in either case both the the score for the tricks you take and the part score bonus would be the same. It makes no sense to set your trick target higher (and therefore risk failing to make your contract) until you get to the level where you can make the game bonus. So at Level 2, as declarer, you simply say “I will play for part score in …….(your chosen trump suit or no-trumps)'“ or else you bid one of the game contracts of 3NT, 4♥ or 4♠ or 5♣ or 5♦

As a general guideline, when you have 25 or more points between your hand and dummy you should be bidding to make one of the game contracts and below that level, you should play in part score. It won’t always work out that you will make game just because you have that many points, and there will be hands where you can make enough tricks for game with fewer points than this, but it’s a useful measure of which type of contract to go for.

Think about points as you play

Whether you are declarer or defender, the information that you get at the start of the hand about how many points each player has can help you to figure out where the high cards are. As you see an ace or a king come out of someone’s hand, have a quick think about how many points that can leave them with.

Scoring the contract

You will find a reminder of all the information you need to score each hand here.