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Counting winners and losers (continued)

You will remember that we have several more examples to look at under this heading.

The contract is four spades and the king of clubs is led. You have nine winners (given fair breaks)---four spades, four diamonds and one club. You have three losers---two hearts and one spade. The arithmetic does not tally !

The count of only three losers makes the assumption that the third heart will be trumped in dummy so this is a vital task that must be tackled at once before drawing trumps. Take the ace of clubs and lose a heart. Win the likely spade return and lead a second heart. Whatever the opponents lead, you can ruff the third heart in dummy for your tenth trick.

Note that an initial trump lead and a trump continuation would defeat your contract.

The contract is four spades and the lead is a small heart. You have nine winners---five spades, two hearts and two clubs. You appear to have five losers---two hearts and three diamonds. The tenth trick can be developed by ruffing a losing heart in dummy or by establishing a club trick. You need a bad break in hearts and spades before  the heart ruff goes wrong so this is a fair bet. The clubs also offer a good chance of setting up club tricks to throw away diamonds or hearts. You must decide on one or the other.

The contract is three no-trumps and a spade is lead. There are only five certain tricks (winners) and the remaining four need to be developed (established) from clubs or diamonds. Which suit would you choose ?

Of course ! The diamond suit should yield four tricks once the ace has gone while the club suit will only give three.

So, you tackle the diamonds at once to set up your nine tricks while your king of spades is still intact.

In the part-score contract above where hearts are trumps, you can't begin to count winners and losers as there are too many missing high cards. Suppose this were the situation (below) after six tricks, having lost three (king of spades, ace of hearts and the ace of diamonds) and won three ( two hearts and the club ace):-

Now you can easily count six more winners (three spades, two hearts and one diamond) and only one loser (the club ; the diamond being thrown on the spade). The arithmetic thus tallies at this later stage of the game, and we come home (very fortunately) to nine tricks.

When you are ready, have a look at these practise hands which encompass concepts from all aspects of declarer play.