Contract Bridge

The ability to count out a hand is the greatest single asset in declarer’s bag of tricks. Counting is not really difficult — you never have to go beyond the number 13 — but for some reason many players seem to look upon it as something beyond their reach.

Yet observe how easy it is in this hand where South wound up in five spades doubled. You might not agree with the bidding, but that’s the way it went.

West led the king of diamonds and continued with the ace. Declarer ruffed and cashed the ace of spades, felling the king. In alternating order, he then trumped three hearts in dummy and two diamonds in his hand, ending in dummy after the last heart ruff.

By this time, dummy consisted of one trump and four clubs, while South had two trumps and three clubs. Then came the key play — a low club from dummy. East won with the queen and, having only hearts left, was forced to lead one.

This allowed South to dispose of his remaining club loser as the heart was ruffed in dummy, so he made five spades doubled. Note, though, that if he had led the ace and another club at the crucial point, he would have gone down one.

The particular South in this case was well- versed in the art of counting. The play to this point had revealed that East started with one spade, eight hearts (since West had shown out on the third heart lead) and three diamonds (since East had shown out on the fourth diamond lead).

With 12 of East’s cards accounted for, it was certain that he had started with exactly one club. The low club play was made in the hope that East’s lone club was the singleton K, Q or 10, in which case one defender or the other would have to commit hara- kiri on the next lead.