. In selecting the suit to establish, the following are
favourable conditions:--One hand should hold at least five cards of the
suit. The two hands, unless with a sequence of high cards, should hold
between them eight cards of the suit, so as to render it probable that the
suit will be established in three rounds. The hand which contains the
strong suit should be sufficiently strong in cards of re-entry. The suit
should not be so full of possible tenaces as to make it disadvantageous to
open it. As regards the play of the cards in a suit, it is not the object
to make tricks early, but to make all possible tricks. Deep finesses should
be made when there is no other way of stealing a trick. Tricks may be given
away, if by so doing a favourable opening can be made for a finesse. When,
however, it is doubtful with which hand the finesse should be made, it is
better to leave it as late as possible, since the card to be finessed
against may fall, or an adversary may fail, thus disclosing the suit. It is
in general unsound to finesse against a card that must be unguarded. From a
hand short in cards of re-entry, winning cards should not be led out so as
to exhaust the suit from the partner's hand. Even a trick should sometimes
be given away. For instance, if one hand holds seven cards headed by ace,
king, and the other hand hold's only two of the suit, although there is a
fair chance of making seven tricks in the suit, it would often be right to
give the first trick to the adversaries. When one of the adversaries has
shown a long suit, it is frequently possible to prevent its being brought
in by a device, such as holding up a winning card, until the suit is
exhausted from his partner's hand, or playing in other suits so as to give
the player the lead whilst his partner his a card of his suit to return,
and to give the latter the lead when he has no card to return. The dealer
should give as little information as possible as to what he holds in his
own hand, playing frequent false cards. Usually he should play the higher
or highest of a sequence; still, there are positions in which playing the
higher gives more information than the lower; a strict adherence to a rule
in itself assists the adversaries.

With a suit declaration, if there is no chance of letting the weak hand
make a trump by ruffing, it will generally be the dealer's aim to discard
the losing cards in the declaring hand either to high cards or to the cards
of an estab