Count Potential Losers: Spot Hidden Dangers Early

A hand that found a blind spot in the semi finals of the US national team trials.

You are south in 4♥ on an uncontested auction. A trump was lead, 2 8 9 10. What next? 

What you really want to do is draw trumps and make a flood of diamond tricks. It looks like you have lots of tricks, say 4 hearts, 6 diamonds, thats already 10, but then add in a spade as well. However, its important on this hand to realise that if trumps break 4-1, you will need to lose the lead. At such time, the opponents can cash two club tricks if dummy’s trumps are gone. 

So, as much as you would like to draw trumps, you can’t, you have to start by anticipating losing the lead. A club at trick two is the only way to make the contract, setting up the ruff before drawing trumps. 

Another way of looking at it, its normal to count losers. The difficult part in this hand, is to count losers that will be there IF you draw trumps. So if you draw trumps, you open yourself up to two club losers (which you might not foresee when you count losers at trick one). 

It is fairly normal to ruff in dummy before drawing trumps so this play should definitely be on the radar. 

At one table, in the semi finals of the trials, one player drew another trump and went down when they actually broke 4-1. Eventually losing 2 clubs, a trump and the ♠A.

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