Drawing Trumps – 15 July 2010

You’ve made it! You started the ascent from base camp with a nervous 1-level bid and now here you are at the summit in a good trump contract. Tired but happy you settle down in your mental tent to consider the opening lead and partner’s dummy. What next?

The crucial point here is to take your time. It took a lot of effort to get all the way here so now you don’t want to go ruining the moment by rushing the hand without consideration of exactly what to do.

Inevitably you will have to consider the key part of the hand which will be the perennial question : “When shall I draw trumps?” There are three answers to this question:

1. In a minute
2. Never
3. Now

You may have heard often enough the refrain “Always draw trumps first!” and while this is a good guideline it does not tell the whole story. Let’s say the contract is Four Spades and the lead is a heart:

a) .... Kxx ......... AQJxx
........ x ............. Axx
....... AKxxx . .....xx
....... Qxxx ........ J10x

If you draw trumps too early you will never get rid of the two losing hearts in your hand. The reason is you need to trump them with two trumps in dummy so you must attend to that BEFORE drawing trumps.

b) .... Kxx ........ AQJxx
........ x ............ Axxx
........ Axxxx ..... x
........ Qxxx ...... J10x

Now you can’t draw trumps as you need to trump hearts in dummy as well as trumping diamonds in your hand. Here you never draw trumps as you need them all separately coming to eight spades and the two aces.

c) .... Kxx ........ AQJxx
........ xx .......... Ax
........ AKxxx .... Qxx
........ Qxx ........ J10x

Now you do draw trumps. You are not going to trump anything in dummy and you need to get rid of their trumps BEFORE you try to run the diamonds.

Just remember the old song : “It's now or never…”