How to Play Hearts After the Lead

Video Transcript

"Strategy after the opening lead. Let's look at a possible hand after the pass. You can even have two Hearts. It really doesn't really matter. You don't have, you have this Heart here that somebody's always going to take it to stop you. Okay, if you have a choice and I will change one of these Club spots just to make life a little bit easier. Okay, supposing that the deuce of Clubs is led. One, three, seven, five, four, okay. And the King comes up right or the Jack. Do you want to overtake that? What are you going to do if you overtake it? What is your plan? You're never going to want to lead a Spades suit like that, which was passed to you by the way. What are you're going to with the Spades suit? You're going to under lead the King and then leave your King unprotected. You don't want to mess with the Diamonds because you don't know, you don't want to lead the high one. The Queen could come out and you don't want to lead a low one and leave yourself without protection. So you let the opponents do the work for you. If the Ace of Clubs comes up, well, hopefully it's not gonna come up from this side so they can go through this. Maybe it will come up from this side and if you can duck that over to this person, that's fine. A lot of people, a lot of good players, will try to make this guy stay on lead. What you want to do is have the opponents leading this hand for you, ok? However, if we have another Spade and another dangerous Spade, now you want to take the lead because you have a safe lead. You have a comfortable ten of Spades lead. You don't have to worry about an Ace or a King. So when to take the lead? When you drive Spades safely, when you don't have dangerous suits in your hand, when you don't want the man on the right to be leading through a bad Spade. Otherwise, take the lead if you can drive the Queen, drive Spades safely and you avoid the lead if you have a hand where you don't want to be leading from dangerous suits. "