Count Your Winners

	A 7 6 3
	A J 9 3
	3
	A Q 10 5
J 8		K Q 2
K 10 7 5 4		Q 8
K Q 6 4		8 5 2
K 8		J 9 7 6 2
	10 9 5 4
	6 2
	A J 10 9 7		Contract: 4 spades
	4 3		Opening lead: K of Dia

What does a winner look like? Well, since a deuce can win a trick either as trump or as a long card, we can only say a winner looks like any card in the deck. No argument there, I shouldn't think. So what a winner looks like is going to vary from hand to hand, depending on trump, the availability of entries, the distribution of a suit, the placement of honors, and I guess not least, the acumen of the declarer.

I picked up four play-throughs of this hand from OKbridge, where one declarer made 8 tricks, one 10 and two 11, all with the identical lead of the king of diamonds. Now the opening lead is traditionally the hardest play to get right for a defender, and I suppose there could be a hand where there was a disparity of three tricks based solely on the luck of finding a certain opening lead by one defender vs. another. But when the opening lead is identical and everyone can see dummy before any differences arise, I would have to suspect a disparity of three tricks represents a failure on someone's part -- possibly a defender, but more likely a declarer in charge of 26 cards -- to visualize winners clearly. So I thought I'd go through declarer's play with the 8-trick hand and one of the 11-trick hands to discuss whether it was luck, a defender's shrewdness or lack of such or something else that led to this disparity.

So this first declarer took the king of diamonds with the A, led to the queen of clubs, cashed the ace, led a club to the closed hand, ruffed (low) and was overruffed! Ouch! By the short trump holding! Of course declarer doesn't know it yet, but he still has two trump in the long hand to lose to. West led the jack of spades, won by declarer, who now led another club and this time ruffed successfully. He now led the jack of diamonds, covered and ruffed in dummy, played the ace of hearts, jack of hearts, willy-nilly won by East who now cashed his top trump leaving declarer with how many?Declarer has no more, of course. In either hand.

East cashed the 9 of clubs (he'd covered the 10 with the jack) and now had to lead a diamond to declarer's 10. Declarer's winners were 3 spades (a ruff in the closed hand, a ruff in the open and the ace), a heart, two clubs and two diamonds (the first and last tricks). The defense's tricks were three spades, the queen of hearts and 9 of clubs.

Well, lemme look at the two making 11 tricks, where the first three tricks were identical. Declarer won the opening lead, led the jack of diamonds, covered, ruffed with the 3, and now led the 6 of spades, won by East. One East now led the 8 of hearts, won by dummy with the 9! That was obviously a defensive goof, not shrewdness on the part of declarer, but at that point it should be obvious how this declarer got the rest of the tricks except for the high trump. Cash the ace of spades, then ace of hearts, ruff a heart, cash three diamonds, sluffing three clubs (he doesn't even have to take the finesse). It doesn't matter where East ruffs in with that high trump. Declarer always has an entry back to the good diamonds by way of ruffing a heart.

Now, the other declarer making 11 tricks took the opening lead, ruffed out the Q of diamonds, low spade from the A, won by East who then favored declarer with a club lead into the A Q, not quite such a flagrant goof as letting the 9 of hearts win the first round of a suit, since the finesse was always on, but still a bit of a favor. Declarer now cashed the ace of trump, the queen of clubs and ruffed a club, cashed the 10 of diamonds, sluffing a heart, led the 9, sluffing another heart, ruffed by East who now led the jack of clubs, ruffed by declarer who led the 7 of diamonds, sluffing dummy's last low heart, and dummy was good with the ace of hearts and the last trump.

Clearly the defense should get a heart trick along with two trump, but a failure to pick up a heart trick only explains the 11th trick. There still remains a disparity of two tricks that can only be attributed to the declarers, so let me go over the two salient differences here, which basically are a matter of seeing what winners were there.

The biggest difference is surely the handling of the diamond suit. Good heavens, after the opening lead, you've got J 10 9 7 with the ace and king gone. Those are big cards. You've got two sure winners with J 10 9, one of them going to knock out the queen, and if the suit splits 4-3, the 7 figures to be a winner also. And when you've got something like that, you've got two things to bear in mind, one is that you've gotta knock out the queen before you cash the winners and the other is entries to those goodies. So you don't want club ruffs in the closed hand. Those ruffs will develop in the fullness of time, when they will be both winners and entries to those powerful diamonds. So just let them be until you need them or are forced by a defensive play to ruff.

Which brings me to the second salient difference, which was the handling of trump. How do you inhibit a third round of trump with such a holding? Cash the ace, lead another, and pray like mad for a doubleton in the hand that wins? No, you know how you hold trump leads to two if you read the above play. You duck the first round. Now you can cash the ace when you regain the lead and let the high trump go hang until a defender chooses to cash in on one of your winners. This doesn't cost you two trump to get out that one high trump.

The first declarer would have done well to note that he couldn't possibly ruff more than two clubs in the closed hand under any circumstances. So he should have been thinking of two rounds of trump before taking those ruffs, at which point any overruff would represent the last high trump the defense was always getting anyway. So the club hook at trick two looks like a fine move, even if he doesn't attack diamonds yet. Then duck a spade.

Now declarer's going to be in clover. Win a heart return, cash the ace of spades, ruff a club, ruff out the queen of diamonds, ruff a club, cash the 10 of diamonds, sluffing a heart, play the 9, sluffing a heart, East ruffs in and you've got to lose a heart to good defense. Making 4.

Nobody said it's always going to be easy. After all, the more complex plays in bridge, the double squeeze, the crisscross squeeze, are all ultimately a matter of seeing winners where average players don't. But . . . but . . this one wasn't that difficult, was it? You've gotta look at those diamonds, see their tremendous potential, and since you can only ruff two clubs in the closed hand under any circumstances, you've gotta think of two trump leads before ruffing. The hand will then practically fall into your lap.