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You happen to be fortunate to pick up a six card heart suit and maybe you had a side ace
or two and you're just really pleased to able to say bid two or three. How do handle a hand?
Well, one thing you don't do, if you've got a good suit that's five or six cards, you
probably will have a five bagger. That's pretty popular. Otherwise, if you have a four, three,
three hand and you don't have at least five trump you're really taking a chance. If you
call hands light with four trump. In other words, supposing that you call this as a trump
suit that's pretty weak. I mean, what are you doing, I mean certainly you must have
had enough strength in another suit or maybe you might want to considering going no trump.
But really try to call with at least a five card trump suit if at all possibly. Otherwise,
your hand will become a supporting hand or you may wind up having to take in a no trump.
Let us suppose though that you have been gifted with a six card trump suit. What's the strategy
here? Well, you can play the ace and maybe try to catch somebody's singleton, king, queen
or jack. That's not really likely. Certainly in the laws of distribution, we don't have
a kitty or discards. So what you want to do is maybe how that your partner has the king
or queen and you're going to lead the low trump, assuming that we're in high. This is
a high bid. Second hand normally goes low, that's another important strategy too. When
the declarer, when the dealer, who has named the trump leads a deuce, or a three, or a
four. He's leading a low card. He's in an uptown contract. Don't throw the king out
there because the partner going to go through and hand high anyway. Maybe the partner has
the ace, you don't know the ace is here. So, second hand low. Now, when it comes around
to the partner, he's not going to put the four or five on it and let them take it in
fourth position with a cheesy six. No, you're going to give your partner the highest trump
you have. Even if it's something like the nine or the jack, if the jack forces the queen.
Well you're in good shape because you pulled two of the honor cards out and now the only
one you have to worry about is the king. Maybe when you get the lead again and you take it
with the ace then the king might drop or you'll leave the king out there because you really
don't care about if it's the master trump. So, your job as declarer, get the kids off
the streets as they say. Get the trump out of there, try to get in to your partners hand
let them cash out the winners for you. Now if you're the defender, like we talked before,
if your lucky or fortunate enough and in Strait Whist you will because most declarers don't
have thirteen tricks off the top. You're going to get in the lead. You're going to cash out
your high suit. You're not going to lead trump, if you happen to have any. You're going to
do the same thing that he's trying to do. You're going to try and get in to your partners
hand, work together, and maybe you can muster up six tricks. Don't forget, if they're bidding
only one or two, then they didn't really have a lot. So, you might have the advantage to
hands, really get to be close at times. So get the trump out, try to get to your partners
hand. If you're on defense, second hand low, third hand high. And I think these basic strategies
will at least help your game.