Bridge For Dummies
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In bridge, you can create winning tricks in a suit, even if you don’t have the ace. When you have all the honors in a suit except the ace, you can attack that suit early and drive out the ace from your opponent’s hand.
  1. Lead an honor card in the suit in which you’re missing the ace.

    To get rid of the ace when you have all the honors except the ace, lead the highest honor. (If the equal honors are in the dummy where everyone can see them, which one to play is optional.) So, if you have the KQJ, lead the king to drive out the ace.

    If you lead a low card, such as the 6, 7, or 8, your opponent doesn’t have to play the ace to take the trick. He can simply take the trick with a lower card, such as the 9 or 10, and he still has the ace!

  2. Continue playing the suit until your opponents play the ace and take the trick.

  3. After the ace is out of the way, use your remaining equal honor cards to take sure tricks. Driving out the ace is a great way of setting up extra tricks. The cards in this figure provide an example of a suit you can attack to drive out the ace.

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You can’t count a single sure spade trick because your opponent (East) has the ♠A. Yet the four spades in the dummy — ♠KQJ10 — are extremely powerful. (Any suit that contains four honor cards is considered powerful.)

Say that the lead is in your hand from the preceding trick, and you lead a low spade (the lowest spade you have — in this case, the ♠3). West, seeing the dummy has very strong spades, plays her lowest card, the ♠2; you play the ♠10 from the dummy; and East decides to win the trick with the ♠A. You may have lost the lead, but you have also driven out the ♠A. The dummy remains with the ♠KQJ, all winning tricks. You have established three sure spade tricks where none existed.

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