Smother play in contract bridge is a type of endplay where an opponent's apparent trump trick goes away.
The situation can be illustrated with the following end-position:
| ♠ | A | ||||
| ♥ | 4 | ||||
| ♦ | 4 | ||||
| ♣ | — | ||||
| ♠ | K 6 | N | ♠ | — | |
| ♥ | J | ♥ | — | ||
| ♦ | — | ♦ | 10 9 8 | ||
| ♣ | — | ♣ | — | ||
| North to lead | ♠ | Q J | |||
| ♥ | 10 | ||||
| ♦ | — | ||||
| ♣ | — | ||||
Spades are trumps, and the lead is in the North (dummy) hand, declarer needing 2 tricks. It appears that the declarer is fated to take just one more trick with the Ace of spades. However, if the declarer leads dummy's diamond, pitching a heart (loser on loser play) (as does West), East gains the trick and has to lead something at trick 12. Whichever card he leads, South will play his trump and West's king is "smothered" – whatever spade he plays, South will take the last two tricks.
Smother play can be executed only when the victim's partner is on lead, because it requires that the declarer ruffs in one hand, and decides whether to overruff with the other.
In contract bridge and similar games, a finesse is a type of card play technique which will enable a player to win an additional trick or tricks should there be a favorable position of one or more cards in the hands of the opponents.
The simple squeeze is the most basic form of a squeeze in contract bridge. When declarer plays a winner in one suit, an opponent is forced to discard a stopper in one of declarer's two threat suits.
Safety play in contract bridge is a generic name for plays in which declarer maximizes the chances for fulfilling the contract by ignoring a chance for a higher score. Declarer uses safety plays to cope with potentially unfavorable layouts of the opponent's cards. In so doing, declarer attempts to ensure the contract even in worst-case scenarios, by giving up the possibility of overtricks.
In the card game of contract bridge, to hold up means to play low to a trick led by the opponents, losing it intentionally in order to sever their communication. The primary purpose is to give as many tricks to opponents as needed to exhaust all the cards in the suit from one of their hands. If that hand regains the lead, it will not be able to put the partner on lead to cash its tricks. Hold up is one of basic techniques in play.
In trick-taking games, to ruff means to play a trump card to a trick. According to the rules of most games, a player must have no cards left in the suit led in order to ruff. Since the other players are constrained to follow suit if they can, even a low trump can win a trick. In some games, like Pinochle and Preferans, the player who cannot follow suit is required to ruff. In others, like Bridge and Whist, he may instead discard. Normally, ruffing will win a trick. But it is also possible that a subsequent player will overruff. This is not always a bad thing—see uppercut below.
An entry, in trick-taking card games such as bridge, is a means of gaining the lead in a particular hand, i.e. winning the trick in that hand. Gaining the lead when some other player led to the previous trick is referred to as entering one's hand; a card that wins a trick to which another player made the lead is therefore known as an entry card.
An endplay, in bridge and similar games, is a tactical play where a defender is put on lead at a strategic moment, and then has to make a play that loses one or more tricks. Most commonly the losing play either constitutes a free finesse, or else it gives declarer a ruff and discard. In a case where declarer has no entries to dummy, the defender may also be endplayed into leading a suit which can be won in that hand.
A strip squeeze is a declarer technique at contract bridge combining elements of squeeze and endplay.
In contract bridge, the trump squeeze is a variant of the simple squeeze in which one threat is a suit that if unguarded can be established by ruffing.
Pseudo-squeeze is a type of deceptive play in contract bridge. The declarer goes through the motions of executing a genuine squeeze where none exists, in the hope that a defender misreads the actual position and misdefends. The pseudo-squeeze simply gives the defender able to recognize the possibility of a squeezed position a chance to go wrong.
The Devil's Coup is a declarer play in contract bridge that prevents the defense from taking an apparently natural trump trick - often called "the disappearing trump trick".
Morton's fork is a coup in contract bridge that forces an opponent to choose between:
The trump coup is a contract bridge coup used when the hand on lead has no trumps remaining, while the next hand in rotation has only trumps, including a high one that would have been onside for a direct finesse if a trump could have been led. The play involves forcing that hand to ruff, only to be overruffed. A similar motive is met in coup en passant, where indirect finesse is used instead of direct.
Coup en passant is a type of coup in contract bridge where trump trick(s) are "stolen" by trying to ruff a card after the player who has the master trump(s).
Trump promotion is a technique in contract bridge where the defenders create an otherwise non-existing trump trick for themselves. The most common type of trump promotion occurs when one defender plays a side suit through, in which both the declarer's hand and the other defender are void:
Loser on loser play is a type of declarer's play in contract bridge, usually in trump contracts, where the declarer discards a loser card on an opponent's winner, instead of ruffing.
Backwash squeeze is a rare squeeze which involves squeezing an opponent which lies behind declarer's menace. A variation of this, known as the "Sydney Squeeze" or "Seres Squeeze", was discovered in play at a rubber bridge game in Sydney, Australia in 1965, by the Australian great Tim Seres; it was later attested by famous bridge theorist Géza Ottlik in an article in The Bridge World in 1974, as well as in his famous book Adventures in Card Play, co-authored with Hugh Kelsey.
The Merrimac coup is a contract bridge coup where a player sacrifices a high card in order to eliminate a vital entry from an opponent's hand. It was named after American steam ship Merrimac, which was sunk during the Spanish–American War in 1898 in Santiago de Cuba in an attempt to bottle up the Spanish fleet.
A forcing defense in contract bridge aims to force declarer to repeatedly ruff the defenders' leads. If this can be done often enough, declarer eventually runs out of trumps and may lose control of the hand. A forcing defense is therefore applicable only to contracts played in a trump suit.
A knockout squeeze is a squeeze in three suits, one of which is the trump suit. The defender's trump holding is needed to prevent declarer from making a successful play involving trumps, including one as prosaic as ruffing a loser. Because the knockout squeeze does not threaten to promote declarer's trumps to winners it is termed a non-material squeeze. Other non-material squeezes include entry squeezes, single-suit squeezes and winkles.