A crossruff is a play in Contract bridge, when you are in a suit contract. It is used mainly by the declaring side, but can be used by the defenders in some situations. In order to use a crossruff, each player in the partnership must have length in a nontrump suit. Also, each partner must be short in the suit that his partner is long in. It is preferable that both players have an equal number of cards in the trump suit, otherwise a regular ruff is usually more effective, as it has the added benefit of establishing the trump suit.

The mechanics of the crossruff are simple. I will use a four-spade contract as an example. Let's say the spades are split evenly at 4-4, the declarer is long in hearts and short in diamonds, and the dummy is long in diamonds and short in hearts. Normally, you could only get four tricks from the spade suit, but you can get a few more if you crossruff. First, each player must play their long suit until their partner has no more cards in it. In this example, decleare would play hearts and dummy will play diamonds. Once each player is out of cards in their short suit, they should simply trump when their partner leads his long suit, and lead your long suit back for partner to trump. This allows you to get more tricks out of an evenly split suit, as you are only playing one trump to win a trick, as opposed to two. This can be repeated until one person runs out of cards in their long suit.

However, there are several risks involved with crossruffing. First of all, when the opponents run out of cards in the suits that you lead, they can overruff, that is, play a higher trump card than yours. Also, this play leaves the trump suit unestablished, so the defenders can possibly steal back a trick or two because you used your trumps for ruffing rather than drawing out the opponents' trumps. Therefore, this play is only suggested when other means of gaining tricks, such as establishing the trump suit or traditonal ruffing, would fall short. However, this play is suggested over a finesse, especially if you only need to take one or two tricks, as the risks are rather low unless you take several tricks using this method.

It is important to cash side-suit winners before commencing a cross-ruff, otherwise the opponents may discard in the side-suit, allowing them to trump the winner later. pl:Rozgrywka_na_obustronne_przebitki