Counting Winners
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Q J 10 5 2 |
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K 9 7 6 |
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K |
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K 9 4 |
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A 9 4 3 |
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K 7 6 |
10 3 2 |
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Q J 8 6 |
9 8 6 |
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Q 5 3 |
Q J 8 |
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10 3 2 |
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8 |
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A 4 |
| | Contract: 3 no trump |
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A J 10 7 4 2 |
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A 7 6 5 |
| | Opening lead: Q |
This should have been a fairly easy one, and certainly would have been so for one given to counting winners. Question: You have six diamonds and must lose the lead once to establish five winners in the suit (barring a very bad break). You have five spades and must lose the lead twice to establish one winner and a third time to establish a second! Which suit is more appealing?
It's a no-brainer, of course, or at least should have been. Counting our winners, we see five in diamonds along with two in clubs and two in hearts. The spade suit should be looked on not as a source of tricks, but as a suit you at least have stopped and otherwise can dismiss from mind. Opening lead the queen of clubs.
[footnote] I saw a rather good illustration of suits viewed as stoppers rather than trick-producing, along with a failure to understand it recently. A player opened three clubs with 7 solid clubs starting from the king, with the ace of spades. Many partners of these pre-empters bid three no (holding ace of clubs and king of spades), which is a rather lucky make, since the opponents have A K and J in each red suit, but neither jack can be made a winner, and 3 no wraps on 21 hcp's with 7 clubs and two spade tricks. But one player rebid six no, a rather flagrant case of bidding the same values twice. The 3 no bidder doesn't say he has winners in every suit but that he believes he has stoppers and will rely on his partner's clubs for the lion's share of his tricks.
Incidentally, you don't want to fall into the sloppy habit of going second hand low as this declarer did on opening lead. To be sure, there are holdings and leads that invite going low to see what you draw from third hand. But when opening leader has led a top card already and when you have inconsequential spot cards under your top honors, then the only questions are in which hand you want to preserve entries, and secondly, in which hand you want the lead for trick two? Here you've got to see that diamonds, not spades are the suit to hit. You have every expectation of picking up five diamond winners, which no one could lift out of that spade suit. And if you're going to hit diamonds, how many entries do you need? Yes, you need two -- after cashing the king of diamonds. You need one to lay down the ace and then knock out the queen of diamonds, and you need one to then cash three more diamonds. You might duck the lead. After all, you have seven clubs to their six. If the defense is on its toes, it won't matter, but whoever said defenders are always on their toes?
But to the issue. You want to win the club in dummy, cash the king of diamonds, come to the closed hand with a heart and lay down the ace of diamonds, sluffing a spade. When everyone follows, your contract is secure. You knock out the queen of diamonds and have the 9 aforementioned winners. If you ducked a club, the defense must now take its two spade winners, or they're not getting both, for you would be into an overtrick with 3 clubs, 5 diamonds and two hearts.
Here's what happened. Club rode to the ace, diamond to the king, ten of spades to the ace, club to the king, queen of spades to the king, sluffing a club! Sluffing a club? Yes, of course the diamond suit is far more powerful, but it's too late now to develop it, barring an improbable queen doubleton. Had declarer sluffed one of those long diamonds, she would have found just one trick later that that 6 of clubs was a winner!
Well, I won't go further. Suffice it to say declarer was down two. Her winners are self-evident: a spade and two tricks in each of the other suits. Was the intent to develop a winner in spades and then develop diamonds? That was implied with that club sluff. Oh, there may be some slam hands where you can cash a long suit in one hand and then a long suit in the other. But in three no, when you have to lose the lead a couple of times, you won't have the luxury of developing two long suits. You'll have to decide which is more promising and go after it. Here, there's no comparison between the long suits in the two hands for reasons given above.