Bridge

This week’s deals have focused on the importance of counting your tricks as declarer, a simple but vital task. To test yourself, cover the East-West cards. Against four hearts, West leads the deuce of spades. How do you proceed? You have six trump tricks, two diamonds and a spade, and you have time to ruff your third club in dummy. When you can count 10 tricks, make sure you take them. Grab the ace of spades and lead a club to your queen. West wins and shifts to a trump. You win, concede a second club, win West’s trump return in your hand and ruff your last club in dummy. Then you can come to the king of diamonds to draw the last trump and take the ace of diamonds. Making four. In real life, declarer finessed with dummy’s queen on the first spade, and East won and shifted to a trump. Declarer couldn’t recover. He conceded two clubs, but the defense got to lead trumps twice more, stopping a ruff in dummy, and declarer had no other chance for a 10th trick.