Drawing Trumps

Unless there is a very good reason not to, generally you should draw your trumps straight away. However there are two reasons why you should delay drawing trumps.

There are two reasons you may not want to draw trumps right away. 1. It may be because you need to ruff (trump) a loser/s in dummy. 2. You may need to discard a card or establish a suit which then gives you a discard.

The most important objective for playing in a trump contract is maintaining control of the suits during the play. Without a trump suit the opposition may be able to win many more tricks in a suit in which they have a strong holding whereas if you are in a trump contract, if you run out of their suit you can ruff their winners.

Rules for Drawing Trumps

1. Draw trumps straight away especially if you have concerns that your opposition may ruff (trump) winning cards you hold in your side suits.
2. Be careful not to draw trumps prematurely that is before you have ruffed cards in dummy that otherwise will be losing cards.
3. If your opposition have just an outstanding top trump card it is not necessary to draw it, just wait and let them ruff in whenever they want to. You are more concerned about draw out their losing trump cards before they can use them against your side suits.

North

West

East

South

Instant Progress Quiz - Check all correct answers

Question:With these hands in 2S how many rounds of trumps do you plan to draw? Dummy's Hand Declarer's Hand 0 1 2 3 4 5

Practice This Lesson

Practice drawing Trumps in 1S. If West trumps your diamond tricks you will only make 2 tricks

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Extra for Experts

A different game on the same subject as this lesson, with questions for community discussion in the comments area below.

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