How Not to Count

One of the commonest of mistakes made by inept declarers, I would say, is to count losers by shortage in one hand, and by a shortage in another suit in the other hand. Oh, it'll work on occasion, when you're loaded for bear in trump, no doubt. But then, it'll often not work and is terribly ill-advised. First let me start with what is about the most explicit and unambiguous illustration of this proclivity:

"
A Q 7 5
J 8 6 4
8 5
A Q 5
6
A K Q 9 3
9 6 4 3 Contract 4
K 7 3 Opening lead: 4 of

Declarer won the opening spade lead in dummy with the A, studied his remaining cards about 5 seconds and then spread his hand with a flourish and the announcement, "Drawing trump and conceding two diamonds." Oh? His RHO, which I admit was yours truly, asked him to go through his claim again, at which this RHO said, "No, George. You're going to have to lose four diamonds. I have four trump." Now declarer yelped that he's not going to draw all trump when he sees he has a bad split. I thought later that I should have asked him, "George, would you ever make a claim that is valid only on an even trump split before testing to see if you have that split?" I guess I'll never know how he would have answered.
I do actually have two arguments for any readers who think it was petty or even unethical of me to insist on his loss of four diamonds (we did go through a directoral call, ruled in my favor). The first was actually adduced by a teammate who said, "If he tests hearts for the break, it'd only take one more lead to ensure he'd lose those same diamonds." (I.e., if he led hearts twice and then started losing diamonds, East could lead a trump with each diamond captured.) And who's to say that a declarer who had such a wrongheaded grasp of the hand couldn't have led one more round of trump as he was thinking his way through the hand before he saw that he'd have to lose a couple of diamonds if he wanted to ruff in dummy? And secondly, why should he benefit from my better analysis of the hand? Had I said, "Play it out," that's pretty close to saying, "George, that's not going to work." Now he has a chance to go back and rethink his line of play, and that's not the way we play bridge. You don't go back and replay the hand after an opponent tells you that your line is faulty. You don't say, "Okay, I don't have 11 winners, but for heaven's sake, gimme 10, though I've done nothing to earn the 10th!"
Or to put my objection another way, declarer wasn't just conceding only two diamond losers, but claiming eleven winners, which he simply couldn't have realized on his proposed line of play.
Anyway, declarer's mode of thought could hardly have been clearer if he'd expressed it openly. He saw a shortage of spades in the closed hand, a shortage of diamonds in dummy and thought they betokened his losers, and so claimed. If this declarer had had the slightest inkling that he needed an even trump break for his claim, he only needed to lay down the A of hearts. That he didn't do so was pretty good evidence that that necessity didn't cross his mind.
Actually I recall one other fairly explicit such claim, though this was in the post-mortem. Dummy had come down with a singleton in each red suit as declarer played and made 3 no. "I wonder if I could make 4 hearts," she mused, at which I said, "In hearts, you have to lose a heart, two diamonds and a spade," at which she said, "I have only a singleton diamond in dummy," at which I said, "Yes, but you also have only one heart, and I have the ace and can wipe it off dummy," at which she said nothing. This was a Life Master, far more knowledgeable than the first declarer.
Most of the time, however, it's only an inference from the way declarer played the hand. There isn't quite as much table talk on OKBridge as at actual tables, at least not in my experience. Here's a hand entered just yesterday, as I write this, that prompted me to go back to that first hand and then write up the dangers of this proclivity:

9
9 6 4
Q J 10 6 5
A Q 10 6
K Q 8 5 2 10 4 3
Q 10 8 5 3 A K J 7 2
K 7 9 3
J 9 5 4
A J 7 6
------ Contract: 6 clubs
A 8 4 2
K 8 7 3 2 Opening lead: 3 of hearts, K of spades

I have a fuller exposition of this hand here, so I'll keep this short and let it suffice to say that this declarer drew three rounds of trump before going for ruffs (and after knowing that the diamond hook was off), and I feel morally certain that she saw a void in hearts in one hand, a singleton spade opposite the A in another, solid clubs, and offsides K of diamonds which was affordable and didn't see that there simply won't be enough trump in either hand to ruff all the losers in the other after three leads. You've only got two trump to handle 3 hearts, or one trump to handle 2 spades. Down one.
Since the hand can be made, watching entries, taking a chance on the second round of diamonds, which sure as hell beats not taking a chance and going down, I feel there's no other explanation. I mean, you don't play to go down on makable hands, do you? You merely didn't see where your winners (or avoidance of losers) lay.
I once remarked at a table of very experienced players that you can lose a trick in a trump contract in a suit where you have a void. I thought it was a mere pleasantry of no consequence, but one player asked "How?" How do you lose a trick where you started with a void? Oh, please. You lose a trick where you started with a void when you have no more trump. Was that difficult to figure out? Has that never happened to you, or to an opponent? Improbable. This declarer lost a heart, tamely playing the 7 of spades from the closed hand.
And one last comment on counting shortages from both hands: you hear it in the quickie analyses that are so common at actual tables (not unheard of in OKBridge, but not so common). "We coulda made 3 diamonds, or 4 spades or whatever," one sagely intones. "We lose only one diamond and two hearts", or the like. You know they're counting shortages in both hands, not to mention dismissing the possibility of a trump lead, the need for sufficient entries to do all that, etc., etc. I think it'd be conservative to say half of these quickie analyses are wrong. I find I have to look at 52 cards (barring a few elementary cases) before I'm prepared to say how many tricks can be made in one denomination or another. And I don't feel it's because these people with their quickie analyses are so much brighter, though I guess the reader will have to be the final judge of that.