Leading

Every trick starts with a lead, and whoever leads sets the terms everyone else has to answer to. The round's very first lead belongs to Vorhand, the seat to the dealer's left; after that it goes to whoever won the last trick. Declarer or defender, the question is the same: a good lead isn't about the single card you play, it's about which suit you force into the open.

Read the official rule on who leads and who wins a trick.

Lead your long suit

You're on lead and nothing in your hand is a guaranteed winner: then lead from the suit where you hold the most cards. Say you hold the Seven7, Eight8, Nine9 and King of DiamondsK in a Hearts suit game. Four of the seven Diamonds are yours, so only three are still out there. Start with the Seven, which hands over no Augen while everyone at the table still has Diamonds. After two rounds of Diamonds the others are likely out of it, and every further Diamond forces them to ruff with a trump or throw a card away. Either answer tells you more about what they still hold.

Drawing an Ace

You are a defender, trump is still out there, and you hold two Aces: the Ace of ClubsA and the Ace of DiamondsA. An Ace is the highest card of its suit, and it takes the trick. It is only safe, though, for as long as the declarer still has to follow suit. Once they are out of that suit, they ruff your Ace away with a trump, and the eleven Augen land on their pile instead of yours. In a suit game the declarer can be out of a side suit before the first card is even played: two cards go into the Skat at the discard, and a short suit goes with them. So leading early does not make your Ace safe, it makes it less exposed, because the more cards of the suit are still out there, the more likely the declarer has to follow. That is what decides which of the two Aces you draw, too: lead the one whose suit still has the most cards outside your hand. With five Clubs unaccounted for and only two Diamonds, the Ace of ClubsA goes and the Ace of DiamondsA stays. The Ace of a short, mostly played suit is the one you hold back: that is where the declarer is likeliest to be void, and where your Ace is likeliest to die. Only once no trump is out there any more, or in an Ouvert game where the declarer's open hand shows the suit, is the Ace truly safe: nobody can ruff it then, and that is the one case the hint calls a safe point winner.

When nothing else fits

No long suit to lean on, no Ace worth drawing, nothing else the position calls for? Lead low. Say you're a defender in the second trick, you can't yet tell where the declarer's strength sits, and your choice is between the Seven of Hearts7 and the Queen of SpadesQ. Lead the Seven: if the trick goes to the declarer it costs you nothing, while the Queen would hand them three Augen for free. Giving away the least information and the fewest Augen is a perfectly good plan when you genuinely don't know what's best, and your partner still learns something from the suit you picked.