must follow with a card of the suit led, but lacking that suit may play any card.
Whichever hand wins a trick will lead any card to the next trick.
Once the opening card has been led, each player must follow suit if able. Should you be deficient in the suit led, you are free to play any other card, including trump. High trump or highest card in the suit led wins the trick. The winner of each trick leads to the next. If the trick is won by a card from the dummy¹s hand (or "board"), the next trick must be led from the board.
The first time trump is played, trump is said to be broken. Only after trump has been broken may anyone lead with a trump -- unless they have no other suits available.
West begins by leading the 5. South wins East's J with the A.
At tricks two and three, South cashes (takes short tricks) his A and K, and discovers that the defense will win a trick with the Q (meaning that West threw out their J and 2, leaving the Q in reserve for later use).
South continues at the fourth trick by leading the 3 to dummy's K.
South leads 3 to the dummy's K.
South next leads the 10, West puts on the Q, but South trumps it in dummy with dummy's remaining trump.
Except for West's high , South will win all the tricks and the contract succeeds.
This is the sample Bridge hand shown earlier.
Now that you've read about the bidding and playing of a hand, you'll need to learn about keeping score. Let's take a look at the Contract Bridge socring system on the next page.