Counting tricks and Making a Plan...

[OliverC]

Partner failed to count their tricks or to make a plan on this hand. Instead they followed a suicidal line of play and ended up going one off in a contract that was ice-cold for an overtrick.

You are Declarer at Red vs Green, and you and Partner have bid to a good contract of 4NT.

North           South
1               1
1NT⁽¹⁾          2 ⁽²⁾
2NT⁽³⁾          3
3               3
3NT              4NT⁽⁴⁾
All Pass

(1) Beta
(2) 5 Controls
(3) HoC
(4) Quantitative

South (Dummy)
AKJ9
Q9
K862
K52

Jack led

North
Q2
AK53
AJ107
Q94

East leads the Jack of Clubs, which runs round to your Queen. How do you plan the play?

Clearly the key to  12 tricks is finding the Diamond Queen, but you only need 10.

• Count winners: 4 Spades, 3 Hearts, 1 Club and 2 Diamonds (all "on top") = 10 tricks
• Count Possible Losers: 2, Ace of Clubs and possibly the Queen of Diamonds
• Potential Problems: We need to keep East away from the lead in order to protect Dummy's King of Clubs.
• Plan: Cash the Ace of Diamonds and run the Jack of Diamonds, finessing against East. Even if West wins the Queen, they cannot attack Clubs without giving you a second Club trick, so we're cold for 11 tricks.

Partner, however, lost the plot completely on this hand. Instead of even just cashing her 10 top winners and claiming, she took 4 Spades, discarding Clubs from her own hand, and then took 4 rounds of Hearts, discarding a Club from Dummy (visibly blanking the King) when East won the 4th round with the Jack. EW had absolutely no problem now in taking 3 Club tricks as well to take Declarer one off.

Discarding Clubs from hand as well as blanking Dummy's King of Clubs is fine if you're simply going to cash the top Diamonds and hope the Queen falls, but a crazy line if you're going to concede the 4th Heart to East, the danger hand. Even on the 4th Heart, discarding a Diamond instead of a Club when you see that it's East who is about to win the trick would allow you to make the contract by playing West for Ax(x) and ducking the next Club.

Attacking the Diamonds at trick 2, however, is absolutely 100% for 11 tricks as long as you finesse against East. In practice, East had a singleton Diamond so you have to concede a Diamond to West, but West can do you no harm in Clubs, so now you have 1 Club, 4 Spades, 3 Hearts and 3 Diamonds guaranteed.

(1) COUNT, (2) PLAN!!!!
This is such an easy game at times.