22 The power of ruffs in trump contracts

What method of evaluation do you use when you raise partner’s suit? Probably either the Losing Trick Count or some points system. I use a better one than either of those which I will reveal soon. It is aptly called Dummy Tricks. My system has an important rule (and so should yours): that the dummy hand shape must include at least one potential ruff (void, doubleton or singleton) and so can be any shape except the Dreaded Flat Hand.

I think that dummy ruffs are a crucial factor in good trump play. So much revolves round that need for at least one dummy ruff. The basic principle that drives it all is so important and often completely ignored goes back decades and is this:

It pays to trump in dummy but not in hand. Copy that to a little bit of paper, put it in a locket and wear it round your neck on bridge days.

Ruffing in dummy produces an extra trick from thin air, whereas trumping in hand weakens the declarer's power (hence the defenders' sound strategy of leading suits he hasn't got (being careful that dummy has got it, otherwise it's ruff-and-discard.)  It may sometimes be necessary for declarer to trump in hand to get the lead there (maybe better if he used an ace for that purpose) but this does not produce an extra trick because that trump was a trick already. So if dummy has four trumps and a void, declarer can make up to three extra tricks by not drawing trumps too soon. And there is always the expert’s cross-ruffing that happens in the last three or four tricks, but note again, the dummy ones were the magic, the declarer ones were just a way of getting back to hand with cards that were already tricks in their own right.