Sometimes you count distribution

BY PHILLIP ALDER

Over the last two weeks, we saw how tracking the high-card points usually helps either the declarer or the defenders to work out what to do when faced with an apparent guess.

Rarely, though, one player needs to count an opponent's hand shape. This tends to be harder because there are three suits to track, then one uses that information to calculate the fourth.

In this example, how should South plan the play in seven notrump after West has led a top-ofnothing club nine?

North added his 23 points to his partner's 15-17 and realized that one queen was missing. Since Gerber would tell him only about aces and kings, he plunged into seven no-trump, knowing it would be at worst on a finesse.

South started with only 12 top tricks: three in each suit. The mirror distribution, as is almost always the case, left the result in the balance. Note that if you were to take either North's or South's fourth diamond and put it in any other suit, seven no-trump would be a claim.

Rather than play immediately on diamonds, South first cashed all of his winners in the other three suits. What did he learn?

He found that West had started with two spades, two hearts and five clubs. Ergo, he had four diamonds. (Declarer could have counted the East hand to come up with the same answer.)

Now the contract was assured. South cashed dummy's diamond ace, played a diamond to his queen and returned a diamond to dummy's 10.

If you play golf, for practice, count all four players' strokes — without telling them, of course.

Look for the Saturday Bridge and Chess and local Bridge results in the new Saturday Fun & Games section