Possible opening leads to a suit contract with a poor hand and no honour sequence:

There are no fixed rules, and you can rarely be certain of getting it right, but here are some things to consider. You could try.....

• Partner’s suit (if she has one).

•  or opposition’s unbid suit (if there is one!)

• or a singleton (if partner wins the trick/gets the lead,  the  hope is
         that she will play back the suit back for you to trump)

• or a  high card then a low card in the same suit (Also known as an echo, or a Hi-Lo, or a Peter) . This  shows a doubleton, asking partner to lead the suit back for you
   to trump  - if you still have any left!).

• A suit bid by dummy but denied by declarer.  This is to  encourage declarer to play a high card from dummy, giving your partner an opportunity to overtake and perhaps win the trick.

THE RULE OF 11

Partner leads her fourth highest ♠, which happens to be the 7.  Subtract that card, the 7, from 11 giving 4. This tells us that there are only four cards higher than the 7 in the other three hands.

We can see two of these in dummy and two in your hand. This tells us that declarer has no cards higher than the 7 in her hand.  So…

• …if declarer play the 2 from dummy we know that partner’s 7 will win the tick, so we can safely discard the 3.
• …if declarer plays the 9 from dummy, we will win the trick with the J
• … if declarer plays the K, you just overtake with the A.

Having won the trick you can now lead the same suit back to partner, knowing that you will win more tricks in the suit.

The layout of cards in this example gives you a lot of information.  If you and/or dummy had low cards instead of AJ3 /K92 you could not deduce as much useful information.

FOUR QUICK TIPS

1. Second player plays low, fourth player plays high
   If the opposition have made the lead, play low if it is your turn to play next (i.e you are the second player), only taking the trick if you are the last player.  But there is a common exception…..
2. …and the exception is: cover an honour with an honour
   Which means, in plain English, if the opposition have played a picture card and you have a higher one, take it if you can.  This usually works well, but if you are in the second seat your partner may sometimes have to play a even higher honour because it’s the last card they have in that suit so you end up winning the trick twice.
    
3. Declarer tip:  draw trumps first unless, with a particular hand, you have a very clear reason not to.  When I decide not to draw trumps first –for what seems at the time to be the best of reasons – it’s almost always a mistake.
4. Declarer tip: Count the trumps carefully.  If you have drawn all the trumps except for a solitary top one held by the opposition, leave it alone.  If possible force them to use their valuable top trump on a ruff.  That way you will still have one/two controlling trumps to play with.
    

When playing a suit contract, many experts recommend to count the losers in your own hand and work out whether to ruff them in dummy or discard them on side suit winners.

The hand above was played in 4♠ by South, The declarer has 3 club and 2 heart losers. The long diamond suit in dummy provides opportunity to discard losers.  So the plan should be draw (with care) 3 rounds of trumps, assuming 3:2 split. 4:1 split  also need to be considered. 

You can use "Play it again" feature should you be interested to have a go.

No-trump play can be difficult. What most experts recommend is that you should first count your top tricks - tricks you could cash without losing the lead. Second, subtract that total from the number of tricks you require to make your contract. Finally, decide from which suit (suits) you are going to establish those extra tricks.

EW reached 3NT contract on the hand displayed above. East has 8 top tricks. Both minor suits would provide opportunities for extra tricks. The diamond suit particularly would be the one to tackle immediately, as the Queen is the only missing honour.

If interested, you could try "Play it again" feature to have a go and replay the hand.