Is it one of one or one of two?

Epictetus, a Greek stoic philosopher, said, “We have two ears and one mouth so that we can listen twice as much as we speak.”

Hear, hear!

Unless you are playing in a duplicate pairs event, whether you go down one or two makes little difference — only 50 or 100 points, assuming you aren't doubled. But if you go down one when you could have made your contract, that is much more expensive.

As declarer in a trump contract, count your potential losers. If you can see too many, try to find a way to eliminate one or two. How does that apply in this deal? South is in four spades, so he can afford only three losers. After West leads the club queen, what should declarer do?

Some declarers will take the first trick and play a trump to East's ace. However, after East returns his second club, and South wins, draws the missing trump and plays a heart to dummy's queen, East takes that trick and leads a diamond. West wins with his ace and cashes the club jack to defeat the contract.

Declarer should have seen the danger and realized that he was always safe as long as West had either the heart jack or heart king, and there was no bad heart split.

At trick two, South should lead the heart 10 and overtake with dummy's queen. If the finesse wins, declarer draws trumps as quickly as possible. Here, though, it loses and East plays back his remaining club. South wins and plays the heart six to dummy's nine. When a finesse finally wins, declarer discards his remaining club on the heart ace, then turns to trumps.