Bridge WITH BOB JONES

An up-and-coming bridge player “turns the corner” when he starts to count. We don’t mean counting high-card points — every player learns how to do that in his first lesson. We mean counting his opponents’ high cards and distribution. This usually requires no more than remembering the bidding and watching the cards as they fall, but it is the difference between good players and average players.

South won the opening heart lead with dummy’s ace and then overtook the queen of hearts with his king. He cashed the jack of hearts, a little surprised that East discarded instead of West, and then the 10 of hearts. The most likely ninth trick would be to find West with the king of clubs. West, however, had already “shown up” with at least six diamonds from the auction and four hearts from the play.

To complete his count of the hand, South cashed the ace of spades and led a spade to dummy’s king. When West followed to both spades, he was known to have at most one club.

That one club had to be either the king or the jack for the contract to succeed, so declarer led a low club from dummy and played low from his hand! West won with the jack, but he had to play a diamond and South had his ninth trick. Good counting and well played!

Note that cashing the fifth heart early would have given West a chance to discard the jack of clubs. Not an obvious defensive play, but why give him a chance?

Bob Jones welcomes readers’ responses sent in care of this newspaper or to With Tannah Hirsch and Bob Jones Tribune Content Agency, LLC., 16650 Westgrove Dr., Suite 175, Addison, TX 75001. E-mail tcaeditors@tribune.com.