You're Looking for Winners


Not an Absence of Losers in a Specific Suit

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

Only two declarers were in slam here, one making (without defensive error) and the other didn't. They got the same opening lead and the same continuation at trick 2. But where one was looking to avoid a heart loser on a finesse, the other found a heart winner on the finesse, and yes, that's what made the difference.
When I first looked at this hand and noted the trump break, my suspicion was that the hand couldn't be made. You're going to have to ruff two hearts and a diamond in dummy. Then I asked myself, was the K of spades onsides and found the answer was not only Yes, but that the defense had obliged by making this clear at trick one. Well, now, you only hafta ruff two red cards. But wait a minute. With that break, ruffing twice means West will have more trump than dummy and can duck three times to establish the queen. And then at last I saw the light: the hand plays very nicely as a dummy reversal: You've got 4 baby spades. One goes on the ace, one gets ruffed and two go on the diamond honors. Simple, no? Whether I would have gotten my head straight in time had I been playing the hand, God alone knows. But I think it's instructive to note how the hand plays very well and how that one declarer went astray. Further, you might note that on a dummy reversal, you've got 2 hearts opposite the A Q and must take the finesse to avoid shorting dummy's trump to fewer than West holds.
Lemme first take the successful declarer: He let the spade at trick two ride to a ruff, went to the A of clubs, getting the bad news (though it coulda been worse, of course), cashed the K of diamonds and ruffed another spade (!). [He didn't need that and now doesn't have enough clubs to pick up the Q on a finesse. Still . . . ] He now played the J of clubs, which held, cashed the A Q of diamonds, sluffing a heart and a spade, ruffed a diamond, took the heart finesse, cashed the A of hearts, discarding the K of spades! and now though he has no more clubs to lead, he has West on a trump coup: Dummy holds the K 9 of clubs while West holds Q 7, and a low heart lead allows declarer to pick up the suit.
Clever. Declarer had a singleton heart in dummy at that point. So what happens if he declines the heart finesse? Well, he would then be looking at Q 6 4 in hearts and would have to ruff the next lead as West follows, and now declarer cannot pick up West's trump. As my heading above indicates, the trick isn't to avoid a heart loser by declining the finesse but to pick up 12 winners. And this declarer could not have done without the finesse and the ability to retain the lead in the closed hand up to the 12th trick.
Here's the play of the not so successful declerer. A of spades, winning the spade continuation, sluffing a heart, cash the A of clubs, getting the bad news, cash the K of diamonds, then go to the A of hearts. To the A of hearts! That was his undoing. Yeah, he avoids a heart loser by sluffing one on the A of diamonds, but bridge is played in four suits, and there's no great advantage to avoiding a heart loser if that means you lose a heart winner. Not on this hand, where you need every trump in dummy, aside from a diamond ruff, to pick up West's holding. Given a benign 2-2 trump split, avoiding the heart finesse would make sense. You get the winner you might have had in finessing by ruffing in dummy. Though dummy holds the long trump, you'll also ruff a diamond in dummy, thus increasing your club winners to 6 by ruffing twice in the long hand. Well, to continue: declarer pushed the J of clubs through, ruffed a heart, ruffed a spade, cashed the Q of diamonds, played the 9 of diamonds, ruffed on his left, overruffed, came back with a spade, ruffed with the 10 -- overruffed with the Q!
There are a couple of lessons here, first one specific to this hand and then a general one. When declarer declines the heart finesse for that temporary, very temporary safety, he's now looking at two "low" hearts (one went on the K of spades). Now how's he going to take care of them? By ruffing? But ruffing two hearts would give dummy the K 9 of clubs while West has Q 7 5! And you'd still have a fourth diamond to worry about. The situation is simply impossible if declarer stops to reflect.
Well, let's count winners: one spade, one heart and three diamonds! Which means we've got to pick up seven tricks in clubs and the briefest of examinations will show that that cannot be done on that trump split. And declarer clearly should have been looking for two heart winners, meaning he would need only six trump winners, which is clearly far more feasible by way of ruffing one spade in the closed hand and taking the marked finesse in clubs for five club winners in dummy.

The larger lesson is this: Particularly when you count out a hand by losers, you must account for every card in one hand or the other, allowing for tricks you can afford to lose. Every card, excepting tricks you can afford to lose, must either be winner or go on a winner in the other hand. Here declarer can afford to lose one trick in his six bid, but with the A of spades opening lead, there is no ambiguity about the rest of the hand. Every card in each hand must either be a winner or go on a winner from the other hand.
Had the losing declarer borne that in mind, he would have had to reflect that if he declined the heart hook, he would then have two hearts to ruff in dummy (he threw one on the K of spades) and one diamond. And it should be apparent at a glance that if he ruffs three times in dummy -- which has only 3 low cards -- he cannot pick up the Q of clubs. Oh, but maybe it plays better from dummy, which is often the case.
Okay. On the diamond honors, declarer sluffs one heart and one spade. One spade went on the A of the suit, and the K is a winner (if we can get all trump out, to be sure), leaving just two spades that must be taken care of, and we can ruff them in the closed hand, no? Well, even if you could without being overruffed (and we've seen that you cannot), that would leave you with one club while West has three, which is to say you can finesse through the queen only once, and after that West will have a guarded queen while dummy has only one higher honor and would soon have to concede a trick to the Queen.

When you count by winners, it isn't so necessary to account for every card in a hand being either a winner, going on a winner in the other hand, or an affordable loser. If you've got your winners, you've got winners you can cash out, and I have long favored counting out winners over counting losers, except for the occasional hand where counting losers is easy and almost instantaneous. Either way works, if you've got your head screwed on straight. There are necessarily 13 tricks on every hand, so if you avoid losers, you are going to be generating winners, and if you're generating winners, you'll be avoiding losers. That is, I repeat, if your head is screwed on straight, for the declarer above who avoided the heart finesse didn't thereby generate a winner, didn't have a way of accounting for the Q of hearts and that Q of hearts as a winner on a finesse was what spelled the difference between a positive and a negative score. And I would hazard the guess that experts are so quick to evaluate their potential that they're hardly aware of whether they're counting out winners or losers.
Anyway, that's the major lesson. Declarer needs 12 winners, by hook or by crook, not an absence of a heart loser, and will have to find a path to 12 winners.