What does "endplay" mean?

A tactical play in which a defender is put on lead at a strategic moment, and then has to make a play that loses one or more tricks

What is a synonym for "endplay"?

Common synonyms include: throw in, throw-in.

Endplay

noun, verb

noun, verb ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun

1
A tactical play in which a defender is put on lead at a strategic moment, and then has to make a play that loses one or more tricks
"At this point, South should have played a spade to dummy's ace, ruffed a spade and led her club king to catch West in a trump endplay, but she became flustered and lost two more tricks to go down one."

Verb

1
To make an endplay.
"Then a diamond lead endplayed West."

Synonyms

All synonyms

throw in throw-in

Example

More examples

"At this point, South should have played a spade to dummy's ace, ruffed a spade and led her club king to catch West in a trump endplay, but she became flustered and lost two more tricks to go down one."

Etymology

From end + play.

Related phrases

on lead

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.