Declaring in a Suit

 To maximize your chance of making the contract, you should, before the first trick has been taken,

• Analyze sure losers and determine how to minimize losses using sluffing.
• Determine the number of certain trump tricks you can capture.
• Seek to ruff or set up to ruff on the short side of the table (ie, the side of the table where you have the least number of trump cards). Each ruffed trick increases the number of trump tricks you can capture.
• Strategize on the number of non-trump tricks you can capture and whether you can maximize them by developing winners (by finessing, for example).

Start capturing trump tricks early to prevent your opponents from using them.

After capturing opponents' trump cards, switch to a no-trump strategy, developing additional winners as appropriate.