Choosing Trumps

The Power of trumps

We have looked at trumps, and at having a Dummy hand exposed on the table. Now we᾿re going to look how changing the trump suit changes how many tricks you can take. Early versions of Bridge allowed one side to choose the trump suit directly, and alternated which side got to choose.

Here is an example of why you would want to choose the trump suit:

In the above hand, if clubs are trump, North and South can take 10 tricks. If spades are trump then East and West can take 10 tricks. Whichever side gets to choose the trump suit, it will be worth 7 more tricks.