The Suit Trainer
Many card play problems come down to one suit and the order its cards are played in. The Suit Trainer sets a holding in dummy and in your hand, names the tricks you need, and lets the defenders punish any slip. Players reach for it to sharpen finesses, safety plays and guesses away from the table.
What the Suit Trainer does
The BridgeTricks Suit Trainer is a suit combination trainer and card play trainer in which you play a single suit from dummy and your own hand, aiming to take a stated number of tricks while the defenders play their best cards against you.
The Daily gives everyone the same combinations each day, Practice opens the whole pool, Survival and Rush are runs, and Duels pit you against another player. The Solver is a separate page where you enter any combination and see the exact chance of every card.
The Solver is free and unlimited, with no account. The other modes need a free account, which keeps your results and streaks across devices.
How to use the Suit Trainer
- 1.Open the Suit Trainer and sign in with a free account. The Solver works without one.
- 2.Start with the Daily. Each combination shows both hands in the suit and how many tricks to take, and you choose a card at each turn.
- 3.Play it through to the end. Your first attempt at each Daily combination is the one recorded, solved first try or not.
- 4.Read the result panel. If one of your cards lowered your chances, it shows the trick, the card that cost, how much it cost and the card that was better.
- 5.In Practice, pick a combination or deal one you have not solved, then grade it from 1 (easiest) to 5. Your grades and your misses form groups you can replay.
- 6.Open the Solver, enter both hands and a trick target, and step through any combination card by card.
After a Daily you can see who else solved it first try and join the chat about the hand. Replaying a puzzle later never changes your recorded result.
How the defense and the percentages work
Every card in the Solver shows its exact success chance. The figure covers every possible lie of the missing cards, each weighted by its real odds, with vacant places and restricted choice built in. It is worked out over every layout by an exact solver for the suit rather than estimated from a sample of deals.
The defenders always pick the card that gives them the best chance, given the layouts still consistent with the cards already played. Their cards are not dealt in advance. If you stray from the best line, the missing cards lie in the way that beats you whenever such a layout is still possible, so a lucky guess cannot rescue a poor line.
Open a card's layouts to see its full plan and which layouts it wins or loses, or select two or more lines to compare them layout by layout.
A line is a plan fixed in advance that reacts only to the cards it sees. It can lose a layout that would be easy with the defenders' hands face up, and the percentages already allow for this.
What it costs
The Solver costs nothing and needs no account. The Daily is unlimited on a free account.
Practice and Survival each draw from a daily allowance of 3 a day on a free account, 10 a day with Pro and unlimited with Master. Pro costs $7 a month or $60 a year, and Master $12 a month or $99 a year, the same figures in euros. Players under 26 get 50% off. Details are on the pricing page.
What the Suit Trainer will not do
- It plays one suit at a time. For a full deal with all four hands, use the double dummy solver.
- A Daily you missed cannot be opened later. The archive calendar keeps only the days you played.
- The Suit Cup, a 64-player knockout, has its next registration paused.
- The iOS and Android apps have only the double dummy solver today. The Suit Trainer runs in any browser, including on a phone.
Common questions
Short answers to what readers ask most.
- What is a suit combination trainer?
- A suit combination trainer gives you one suit in two hands and a number of tricks to take, then checks your play card by card.
- Is the suit combination solver free?
- Yes, the Solver is free and unlimited, and it needs no account. Enter both hands and a trick target, and every card you can play shows its exact chance of success.
- How do I find the best way to play AQ opposite three small?
- The Solver shows it. Enter the holding, AQ2 opposite 543 for example, set the trick target, and each card you could play first shows its exact chance.
- Does the solver account for restricted choice?
- Yes. Restricted choice and the odds of each layout, vacant places included, are built into every percentage and into every branch of a line's plan.
- Can I practice safety plays?
- Yes, through the trick target. Success means taking the stated number of tricks, so a target below the most the suit can produce can turn a holding into a safety play problem, and the Solver ranks the cards by their chance of reaching it.
- Is there a daily bridge puzzle?
- The Daily is a set of suit combinations, three by default, the same for every player each day. Only your first attempt counts.
- Can I share a position with a friend?
- Yes. The Solver's URL holds the whole combination, so anyone who opens the link sees the same position, with no account needed.
Play today's combinations in the Suit Trainer. The theory behind the common holdings is in the suit combinations guide, and the Lead Trainer guide covers the sister trainer for opening leads.
Play today's suit combinations, or enter any holding in the free Solver.
More tool guides
- The Lead TrainerHow the BridgeTricks Lead Trainer grades your opening lead over 4,000 double dummy layouts that fit the auction, at IMPs and matchpoints.
- The Double Dummy SolverHow the BridgeTricks double dummy solver works: makeable contracts for every declarer and strain, card-by-card play, and free manual entry with no account.