Count Your Winners

	6
	K 6 5
	A K Q J 5 4
	A 10 2
8 5 2		Q J 10 7
10 7 3		9 4
8 7 2		10 9 6 3
J 9 8 7		K 6 4
	A K 9 4 3
	A Q J 8 2
	------	Contract: 4 hearts, 6 or 7 D, H & no trump
	Q 5 3	Opening lead: various

I looked this hand up after an OKbridge tournament not to see if anyone had done poorly in the play but to see how my partner and I had fared. The hand makes 7 no, 7 hearts or 7 diamonds, and our opponents were in a rather mediocre 6 diamonds. So I was a little surprised to find at the top of the scoring someone who had gone down 2 in seven, and even more suprising, someone who had gone down one in four hearts!

As for the former, a look at her second play after winning the opening club lead told why she was going to have trouble. For she led the king of hearts! Whoa! Let's count our winners, and when you get up to 14, you're going to see how you want to play the hand. We find five hearts, 6 diamonds and three top black cards. But we have only one entry to the diamonds, don't we. And so we want to preserve that entry. You might think of ruffing a diamond at trick 2. You don't need six diamond winners when we count to fourteen, and that would guard you against a 5-2 split. As the cards lie, however, it doesn't matter. What does matter is access to those diamonds after trump are out, which means you want to draw the last round of hearts with the king. If hearts are splitting 4-1, you're going to be in trouble and your only consolation is that so is everyone else in a heart grand.

But nothing splits badly, and every grand slam should be made -- and will almost certainly be for those who ask where there winners are coming from? As for the person down in 4 hearts . . .Well, it took to the third trick to see what was wrong. Opening lead a club, again, wiping out that important entry. A heart to the ace. So far so good. Then the ace of spades! Hold on! If you ruff a spade, you can't be in dummy with all hearts out.

Actually, at that point, declarer wasn't done for. Aside from forgetting that spade suit and reverting to the second round of trump in the closed hand then on to the king in dummy, declarer would actually have been all right if he'd ruffed a spade (which you'd think would be his intent in cashing the ace in the first place), cashing three diamonds, sluffing 2 clubs and a spade, ruffing a club, ruffing another spade (with the king), ruffing a club and drawing trump. A rather dangerous route when sufficient winners are marked elsewhere. His winners would be 2 spades, 3 diamonds, a club, and seven hearts (two ruffs of spades).

But that wasn't his intent. Rather, he cashed his king of spades, then went to the king of hearts, wiping out both an important entry after trump are drawn and a means of ruffing two spades! At that point he can't make the maximum 13 tricks. The best he can do is cash three diamonds, sluffing two clubs and a spade, then ruff a club, ruff a spade, ruff a club, get out trump and lose a spade at the end. If the fourth diamond were with the long hearts, he could cash the fourth diamond, but such is not the case. Actually -- and remember, this declarer is in four hearts -- he could also play for 12 tricks by continuing diamonds into the 4th round, sluffing a second spade. That is ruffed, of course, but that's the last trump, and declarer should have no problem ruffing a spade and tossing two on the fifth and sixth diamonds.

But this player made the utterly strange play of now ruffing a diamond! This cut him off from dummy without a single diamond winner! I was going to say, You don't want to hear the rest. But on noting 8 winners outside of diamonds, I decided to see how declarer got his ninth. This came from a defender leading a diamond to dummy at trick twelve. Trick 13 was another diamond, but ruffed, leaving declarer with only one diamond winner, two spades, one club and 5 hearts.

The hand illustrates one of the advantages of no trump slams, namely that you cash your winners in any sequence you choose. You'd be very unhappy in 7 hearts on a 4-1 split. You've got the tickets to pull all the hearts, but cannot be in dummy when you're finished. On the other hand, if diamonds split 5-2, you can counteract that in a heart contract by ruffing a diamond at trick two and then pulling trump. If diamonds split 5-2 and hearts 3-2, then you'll be the lucky one, not the people in 7 no. What do the odds say?

Five cards splitting 3-2 is 68%, a fairly well-known figure, and seven cards 4-3 is 62%. Hm-m-m-m. But when you figure that in no trump, you can live with 5-0 hearts, whereas in hearts you obviously cannot, that apparently advantage of hearts is wiped out. I dunno. It looks pretty close.

I would prefer no trump, myself, played by the North hand. It strikes me as a tad safer. The heart contractor will beat me if diamonds are specifically 5-2 and hearts are 3-2, and declarer takes the precaution of ruffing a diamond at trick two on a club lead. In all other cases, I'll either tie or beat the people in 7 hearts. (That's "tie" in number of tricks. In matchpoints, that'd be a valuable 10 points higher than a heart grand.) That doesn't sound like the inferior contract to me. And there are a few other considerations. In no trump, a club lead from East (here) would give me a 13th winner, unless both hearts and diamonds have 5 cards in one defender's hand. And on a diamond or heart lead, I'd have an outside chance -- slim but not zero -- of a spade-diamond squeeze if diamonds break badly.