Count Tricks! Make a Plan!

[OliverC]

It's funny how this theme crops up regularly. At the start of the play of each hand, take a few seconds to think about the bidding, assess the hand, count your tricks and, above all, make a plan!

This hand cropped up today when I was having a few hands with Servet:

Love All, Dealer South

South (Dummy)
10873
K1072
A983
7

5 led

North
AKJ542
Q
74
AQJ3

Bidding
South     West     North     East
No           1       1          No
3 ⁽¹⁾     4       4          No
No           5       5          All Pass

(1) Pre-emptive

Servet won the Ace in Dummy. How do you assess the hand?

From the bidding it sounds like the lead is definitely a singleton. We cannot long delay drawing trumps, therefore, especially if East has Qx, because we're definitely vulnerable to a trump promotion if West gains the lead to lead a Diamond. If the Spades are 3-0 they're likely to be with East, and there's nothing we can do about that so we have to play on the assumption that the Spades are 2-1.

Initially there are two obvious losers, a Diamond and the Ace, but we potentially need to take care of our 3rd losing Club. The King will sort that out. Initially, therefore, out plan should be to draw trumps in 2 rounds and then exit with the Queen. It's not really worth trying to get fancy: draw 2 rounds of trumps, cash the Ace, ruff a Club and try leading a small Heart off Dummy - maybe West will duck - because even if the Queen wins, that still leaves us with no parking spot for our 3rd Club unless we take the ruffing finesse in Clubs. On the other hand, there's nothing to lose by taking the ruffing finesse in Clubs later as long as we already know we've no loser.

Best strategy, therefore, is 2 rounds of trumps at trick 2 and 3. Assuming the Spades are indeed 2-1 (which they are), we now cash the Ace, ruff a small Club and exit off the table with a small Heart. If West (who presumably has the Ace) ducks and our Queen wins, we can now afford to try the ruffing finesse in Clubs for the overtrick.


Servet, unfortunately, demonstrably did not make any sort of plan. At trick 2 he crossed to the Ace and ruffed a small Club. Now he crossed back to a top trump (both followed) and ruffed his Queen. The problem with this line of play is that you have brought Dummy down to a single Spade before playing a Heart trick. If you play a Heart now, you are vulnerable to a trump promotion. If you take another round of Spades, that problem disappears, but you have no means of reaching the King.