Bidding is the easy part

When I talk to card players who know bridge but don’t want to play it, they complain about the bidding.  it is too much work.  It is too much too learn.

When I talk to students they don’t complain about the bidding.  They complain about the card play.  Most of them are comfortable talking about the merits of this bid or that bid, about cuebids and splinters, Lebensohl and 2/1 and keycard Blackwood.  But when it comes to card play they often have a problem.  My usual approach is to tell them to count losers in suit contracts and winners in notrump and then to make a plan.

This hand comes from a recent session with a student.  Playing imps with the opponents silent you arrive in 4♠ on this auction

North ♠ J42 ♥ KQJ54 ♦ K4 ♣ K105

South ♠ AKQ107 ♥ 87 ♦ AJ76 ♣ 97

The opening lead is the ♦2.  East plays the ♦Q and you win the ♦A.  So following my suggestion my student counted losers.  She has two possible red suit losers and two club losers if the♣A is offside.  One plan is to ruff the third diamond and then give up a heart.  If all goes well then the placement of the ♣A won’t matter.  And that is the plan that my student chose.  She first drew one round of trump using dummy’s ♠J (a mistake) and then played a diamond.  The ♦K was trumped by West.  As it turns out if West plays clubs now you will go down even though the ♣A is onside!  Here is the position at the table.

Dealer: Vul:	North ♠ 42 ♥ KQJ54 ♦ – ♣ K104
West ♠ 65 ♥ A1093 ♦ – ♣ A864		East ♠ – ♥ 62 ♦ 10985 ♣ QJ32
	South ♠ AKQ10 ♥ 87 ♦ J7 ♣ 97

Let’s say West plays the ♣A and another club.  You win and you can draw trump and play a heart.  West wins the second heart and you come up a trick short.  You make five spade tricks, two diamond tricks, one club trick and one heart trick.  You can see why playing the ♠ J was such a problem.  First it set up the potential that West could make another spade trick by ruffing a third diamond and most importantly it takes out an entry from dummy you can use after establishing hearts.

Dealer: Vul:	North ♠ J42 ♥ KQJ54 ♦ K4 ♣ K104
West ♠ 8653 ♥ A1093 ♦ 2 ♣ A864		East ♠ 9 ♥ 62 ♦ Q109853 ♣ QJ32
	South ♠ AKQ107 ♥ 87 ♦ AJ76 ♣ 97

This is obviously not the best line.  You have an almost certain line.  Let’s count winners.  After the opening lead you have three diamonds, five spades and you can make two hearts by giving up the ♥ A.  You don’t need a diamond ruff and you don’t care who has the ♣A.  You start by drawing trumps, here four rounds.  You lead hearts.  Here West will win the second round.  Now a heart back makes things easy.  You win and cash the ♦ K and ruff a heart back.  You have the ten tricks mentioned earlier.  In fact after you cash your winners, you will make eleven with the ♣A onside.  But what about a club back?  You duck a small club and East wins.  East can’t hurt you with a club return and the most the defense can take is two clubs and a heart.  If you go up with the ♣ K and its wrong it is possible for the defense to force you in clubs and you won’t be able to untangle the diamond suit.

So my student had a reasonable line and in fact she made it on the defense when the defender failed to lead a club back after the diamond ruff.  But it wasn’t the best line.  Some times counting winners works better than counting losers.  And finding one plan doesn’t mean there isn’t a better one.  How do I explain this?