Play the Honor From the Short Hand First

example 1

With only two diamond cards in the dummy, you must take care in how you play your three masters. To avoid problems, play the honor from the short hand first

Which hand is short?

My hand   The dummy   

When you play the honor from the short hand first, you play spot cards from the opposite hand on that trick. You don't want to play two masters on the same trick. That's called "crashing" your honors, and it's bad. If you crash two of your honors, you would only get two tricks from your three masters.

Which card do you play first from your hand?

♦A   ♦K   ♦3  

You will win three diamond tricks. The ♦Q wins the first trick. Then you lead dummy's spot card and win the second trick in your hand. With the lead in your hand, you can continue with your third diamond master.

example 1 (repeated)

Let's see what can go wrong if you fail to play the honor from the short hand first. (The long hand is the wrong hand. The rhyme may help you remember.)

Let's pretend you lead out the honors from the long hand, the wrong hand, first. On the play of the ♦A, you follow suit with dummy's spot card. And on the next trick, your ♦K will crash with dummy's ♦Q. You will be forced to follow suit with your ♦Q under your ♦K. So sad. You would get only two tricks from your three masters.

To avoid such problems, play the honor from the short hand first.

It might work out to play your ♦A first, following suit with dummy's ♦4, and then lead the ♦3 from your hand to the ♦Q. But when the ♦Q wins, you must lead from the dummy to the next trick. Dummy has no more diamonds, so you must somehow get the lead back into your hand to cash your third diamond winner. If you have a future in-hand winner in another suit this may be OK. But if you play the honor from the short hand first, you won't have to worry about such things.

example 2

This time it's your hand that is "short," having only three cards while dummy has four.

Which honors will win the first two tricks?

♣A and ♣K  ♣K and ♣Q   ♣Q and ♣J

Yes. Play the honors from the short hand first - the ♣ A and ♣ K for the first two tricks, following suit with dummy's spot cards. Then lead your last club to dummy's ♣ Q, and finish by leading dummy's ♣ J.

You will have four winners. Excellent.

example 3

You have the top four hearts. How many heart winners do you have?

3  4  5

example 4

Let's start with the cards from the previous example, and give your hand the ♥2. Now we have a short hand and a long hand.

Which card do you play first from your hand?

♥K  ♥J  ♥8  ♥2 

How many heart tricks will you win?

show answer

example 5

Let's move the ♥2 into the dummy, and see if this changes anything.

Which card do you play first from your hand?

♥K  ♥J  ♥8

How many heart tricks will you win this time?

show answer

example 6

You have the four top spades. And you have two spot cards in the dummy to play with the two honors in your hand. But there's a problem. After cashing your ♠K and ♠J, you have no spot card in your hand to lead to dummy's ♠AQ.

If dummy has a winner in another suit, you can get the lead into dummy with this other winner to enjoy your third and fourth spade masters. But what if dummy has no other winners?

Then you may have to give up on winning four spade tricks. Surely your opponents won't want to lead spades for you. After you cash the ♠K and ♠J, they can see the big spades waiting to take tricks in the dummy. They'll lead other suits.

Do you see a way to improve on this two-winner result?

hint

Like this...

example 7

Pretend your ♠J is a spot card. How would you play the spades then?

Win the ♠K first (play the honor from the short hand first), then lead your remaining spot card (the ♠J that you're pretending is a spot...) and win the trick in the dummy – overtake the ♠J with a higher honor.

You are intentionally crashing your ♠J with an honor in the dummy so that you can lead from the dummy for the next trick. You give up on winning four spade tricks, but at least you can win three instead of only two.

When you don't have the spot cards you need for leading to remaining honors in the opposite hand, this is called a "blocked" suit. Go to the next topic:

Blocked Suits