As I've said on occasion, counting the hand as best you can is the single thing that probably makes the difference between average Bridge players and advanced or expert ones. Accurate signalling by Eszter and counting guided us to a good result on this hand, on which you are South:
Game All, Dealer SouthSouth 
A5
AJ6
KQ9
A10765
BiddingSouth West North East1
No 1
1
No 3
No 4
All Pass
Against their 4
I led the
King. This is what I could see:
West (Dummy) 10732
K83
53
KQJ4
South A5
AJ6
KQ9
A10765
Declarer took the first trick with the Ace, Eszter contributing the 7. Declarer now led the
9 from hand, which stunk of a singleton, so I rose with my Ace, and my suspicions were partially confirmed when Eszter contributed the 2, showing an odd number. I cashed the Queen of Diamonds. Eszter played the 6 (showing an even number) and Declarer the Jack.
How do you plan the play from here?
.
.
.
(1)
Assess the contract: No questions that Opps have overreached themselves here, because barring a
void in the East hand, which seems very unlikely, you have 4 sure tricks.
(2)
What can you expect from Partner on this hand? Allowing East a reasonable hand for their 1
overcall and raise to 4
, I felt I should expect exactly
zilch in Eszter's hand.
(3)
What do you think the distribution of the unseen hands is? It's looking like Partner has 3 small Clubs and 6 Diamonds. That gives East a singleton Club and AJ doubleton in Diamonds, which means Declarer has 10 cards in the Majors and partner exactly 4 cards in the Majors.
(4)
Plan: It's tempting to be passive at this point and not to touch Hearts in the hope of a second Heart trick.
However, If Declarer has 6-card Spades here, there is no scope for a 5th trick for the defence, because it means Declarer only has 4-card Hearts and most of them will go away on the
KQJ. I therefore felt I had to defend on the basis that Declarer was 5-5 in the Majors, which meant that Eszter only had 2 Hearts, which in turn meant that she would have 2 Spades.
That meant there was a Heart Ruff in the offing, so I Played Ace and another Heart at trick 3 and 4, and sure enough, Eszter played the 9 and then the 4. Declarer took trick 4 in Dummy and tried the
10, so now I could hop up with my Ace and give Eszter a Spade ruff for our 5th trick.
Most EW Pairs stopped short of game but none were making less than 9 tricks in either Hearts or Spades, so our +200 was a joint top. Counting really does work...
