All of the below tips provide you with a marginal improvement in the number of points you take, over a large number of hands. That means that they're effective if you are playing a game to, say, 100 or 500 or something standard like that, not just for a single hand for fun. More importantly, it means that these tips won't help you if you're always losing badly; they'll only turn you into a winner if you're already playing at about the same level as your opponents.

So, watch your leaks -- if you're consistently taking points because of systematic mistakes, deal with those mistakes before you try the below.