Draw Trumps or Delay: Make the Right Plan

With so many reasons to delay the drawing of trumps, sometimes players can actually miss the most obvious line - of drawing trumps. This is not an easy hand for most people who will not be used to thinking in this way. This article is not supposed to be a speed read. 

Of course at the beginning of the hand we should ask ourselves, can I simply draw trumps and make this contract? If the answer is yes, which say 50% of the time it might be, then go for it. 

The thing people find more difficult, is say they realise that drawing trumps might be a bad idea at the start, they still need to ask themselves the question as the hand develops, Can I now simply draw trumps?

The following hand is quite difficult, but uses day -to-day declarer planning skills.

Playing in 5♣, which happened to be the only game contract that makes, you get a diamond lead. You ruff it and decide to play two top spades, pitching a heart. Next you play the  ♠ J, and west ruffs with the  ♣ 9. What is your plan?

Till this point you have taken a fairly sensible looking approach to the hand. Setting up the long spade suit, and pitching heart losers from dummy. Its now time to be very "concrete", counting winners. Lets start like this - Can I  simply draw trumps?

If I overruff, and draw trumps by playing the ♣A. Whats going on? Worst case scenario, it only draws a single trump, leaving one trump out still (there were three out at the start of the hand) I'll make 5 clubs in dummy (why count 5 and not 6? because, we need to account for the remaining outstanding trump), 3 diamond ruffs in my hand. I'll make 2 top spade tricks and no hearts. That totals 5 + 3 + 2 = 10. I can also make 1 extra spade trick by setting up the long suit. I've already played three rounds of the suit, and have seen west show out, marking the suit as 6214. I need to play one more round of the suit to fully set it up. 

So, the play goes like this. Overruff and cash the ♣A, west shows out so east has one trump left. Now ruff a diamond, ruff a spade (the suit is now set up, that was the fourth round), ruff a diamond, cash the top spade pitching a loser from dummy. Total of 11 tricks. 

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