Coming Soon

I'm putting together a series of videos on card signaling. These detailed videos will cover a complete conventional signaling system that I recommend for any advanced-level regular partnership.

This is a subject sorely lacking in any spades literature, and if you are an advanced+ level player, you'll want to add this to your team's arsenal.

Addicted To Bridge

Hey guys, if you've been wondering why I haven't posted for a long time, well it's because I've been playing Bridge over the past 6 months and I'm extremely addicted. If anyone hasn't tried Bridge, please give it a try. The game is endlessly fascinating and there is a huge online base of players on www.bridgebase.com. The site is set up extremely well, and best of all it's free. It records every hand you play, and you are able to replay it and view how others played the same hand. Feel free to send me an email and I can help you get started.

Bridge was never a big online game which is why I hadn't played it in the past much. Now it's absolutely huge online -- much bigger than Spades ever was even in its peak.

I'll be creating a bridge blog in a couple of months.

The 3 Most Common Spades Mistakes: Number 2 – Poor Trump Management

Proper trump management could potentially take several hundred pages to fully cover, so I will only point out the most basic and damaging errors made.

A) The Opening lead. With a hand containing a long spade suit, many average-level players will lead their short suit first in order to break spades. This is a play that works against your hand, as it weakens your spade suit. In fact, your opponents would do well to continue leading that suit to force you to use up your spades.
Your goal with this type of hand is to use your spades as leads rather than as cuts. You hope that someone else will open the spade suit for you (either partner or an opponent), and then use your spades as leads later on. By leading your longest suit instead, you hope to establish winners in that suit early on and prevent yourself from being forced to ruff. Save your short suit leads for when you have poor spades (“runts”) or when you want to get to the spades suit early for partner when he has a strong spade suit.

B) Leading partner’s void. I see this error all the time and it is closely related to the above. The hand with the long spade suit is leading spades, and partner runs out of spades to return back. Without a spade to lead, he decides to lead into his partner's void side suit. This further weakens the strong spade suit holding, and ends up destroying the hand in most cases. You are now a third opponent when you make a lead like this as that would be a good strategy for the opposition (leading into the long spade holder’s void). This is a great way to kill your partner’s timing and control of the hand.

C) Leading 3 rounds of spades. Another common error is leading too many rounds of spades. In general (80% of cases), two rounds of spades is correct. A third round can be damaging in most cases. Assuming your side has the majority of spades, normally one opponent is out of spades by the third round -- and in general, when one opponent is out of spades, it is bad economically to lead spades as you are killing 2 spades for every 1 you “pull”. Even worse, the opponent left with a spade may have the boss and now you have really hurt your prospects. Even if the opponent with a spade doesn’t have the boss, it can still be very damaging to lead a third round of spades. Your side may need an additional spade later on, and the player can pull the last spade at a later point in the hand. Of course, there are situations where a 3rd round is necessary and makes sense (when your side clearly has the boss – and the opponents have no other prospects), but these are the exception. Another exception isO when you are in a situation where your partner is the short spade holder, and the spades are split evenly among the opponents, this is a good opportunity to lead a third round and kill 2 spades with 1 of yours.

The 3 Most Common Spades Mistakes: Number 1 - Leading Aces

This series of blogs will cover the 3 most common errors made by average-level players.

Average players very commonly lead aces because they deem them “safe leads”. In actuality, the ace lead is a very unsafe lead and I will explain why.

The ace is a very powerful card for many reasons. When an ace is led, it loses every one of its advantages. Here are the advantages of holding onto your aces:

a. Your side may capture an enemy honor card.
b. Your side may win the first round of the suit with a lesser card.
c. You retain an entry for later in the hand.
d. You maintain control of the suit (i.e. a “Stopper”)
e. You make it difficult for your opponents to win unsupported kings.
f. You make it difficult for the opponents to read your hand. By refusing to lead aces, the opponents have less ability to use the count card principle.


To sum things up, by refusing to lead these aces, you will have a better chance of developing extra tricks -- which may either gain a set, or prevent your side from going set!

You will make things hard on the opponents. They will grow frustrated with losing many of their counted king tricks due to you refusing to show the ace. This frustration will lead to underbids later on. These underbids will then lead to bags and cause even more frustration. This kind of pyschological frustration that great players cause is an extremely valuable weapon.

Entry Cards -- How They Affect Tempo

One of the most important components of Tempo is putting the right person on lead at the right time. We must keep the lines of transportation open when possible, such as in this example.

East, knowing that North always covers queens, placed South with the ♣K and inserted the ♣A. East followed with the ♣5 to South's ♣K. South swithced to the ♥J to West's ♥A. West, observing the fall of the ♣10 from South on trick 1, switched to diamonds. After cashing the ♦A and ♦K, West continued with the ♦4.

From this position, we see there is only one line of play for North/South to set East/West. North must ruff with the ♠10, lead the top two spades, and finally enter South's hand with the ♠2. Then South can cash his diamond winners while North throws off his heart losers.

How does North correctly deduce this line of play and correctly unblock spades?

Let us examine the previous plays. Since East/West only need one more trick to fulfill their bid, North must recognize the only possibility of a set is if South has diamond or heart winners to discard his losers. North thus realizes he needs an entry to partner's hand after running spades. He quickly deduces that it is unlikely his partner holds the ♥K since he had led the ♥J earlier. Since West covered the ♥J with the ♥A, East's last count trick must be the ♥K. Thus, the most likely candidate for an entry to South's hand is the spade suit. A brilliant deduction by North allowed them the set by keeping the lines of transporation open and making a key unlbocking play to allow the right player to be on lead at the right moment.

The Forcing Defense -- Disrupting an Opponent's Tempo when on Defense.

Most spades players don't ever consider their roles during a hand as "Offensive" or "Defensive" positions.

This is a mistake, as each role requires much different Tempo strategies. Realizing when you are on Defense, for instance, is the first step to developing the right strategy to disrupt the opponents' Tempo.

West started the hand with the ♣A and continued a club to North's ♣K, two plays that helped North/South establish clubs. South's clubs were now sitting perfect.

North switched to the ♦4; East inserted the Ace, South trumped and switched to the ♠2. On lead with the ♠J, what is East's best lead?

If he leads a spade, heart, or club, the opponents win and continue spades. After two rounds of spades South is left with the last spade plus three established clubs. East/West would be held to one club, two spades, and a possible heart trick.

A diamond return by East disrupts South's Tempo. He can trump and play the ♠A and another spade, but West wins this trick and South is out of spades. East/West then run diamonds. Or South can refuse to trump. However he has no useful discard and East/West will get their bid.

On East's diamond return, South did trump but abandoned the idea of leading spades. He simply cashed out his winners; both sides finished the deal fulfilling their bid. East's forcing play in diamonds being the key to disrupting South's Tempo.

The Hold-Up -- Cutting off an Entry to Disrupt Tempo

The hold-up play is used when you hope to thwart the tempo of the opponents by refusing to take your ace on the first round.

A play very seldom used, it is highly effective and assumes only a small risk. It should be used more often by the so called "experts".

West led the ♥K, North following with the ♥4 and East with the ♥9. South, knowing West lacked entries due to his bid, figured a hold up with a favorable distribution might kill East/West's entries and followed with the ♥2.

West continued with ♥Q, and this time South took the ♥A. East now had no way of reaching West's hearts.

North and South switched to clubs and then diamonds. When East took the ♦A he could not reach his partner's hand to discard a loser.

With East forced to ruff hearts on trick 9, he was endplayed and his side could only win 3 spades, 1 heart and 1 diamond.

Had South not held up the ♥A, East could have led a heart to his partner. Hearts by West fulfills their bid.