Count Winners in No-Trump: Build a Trick Plan

Counting tricks is one of the skills that separate decent players, from excellent players. 

It is not a simple skill. It is a skill you should be working on and improving for the rest of your bridge career. It takes a LOT of commitment and practice..

Let this article be an introduction, and future articles will press this point over and over,  hopefully cementing the idea eventually.

Lets start by looking at a relatively simple No Trump hands.

Playing in 3NT, you get the  ♥6 lead (4th best), what is your plan?

In No trump, the first thing you do is count your quick tricks. That means tricks you already have and could easily cash if you wanted.;

We have 2 heart tricks, 1 diamond trick and 4 club tricks. That totals 7 quick tricks.

What do we do next? 

We look for where we can find two extra tricks.

In this hand, playing spades could set up two new tricks, if you knock out the Ace and King. 

Now lets count losers to make sure it all adds up.

When counting losers, we count outright losers. We also add in certain losers that we believe will occur, or any extra losers we will incur as a result of our plan. If that sounds complicated, forget it, lets just look at how its done.

Here, we will lose two certain spade tricks, the Ace and the King. What else? The only losers we will very likely incur here are  heart losers if they continue to attack the suit. But how many? Since the suit looks to be divided 4-3 there are two losers in the heart suit (the hint was in the opening lead, 4th highest was led and it was the lowest outstanding card, meaning the open lead was not from a 5 card suit). Can you see why there are two losers? It is because the opponents heart suit is only 4 cards long. They will not make all 4 of those tricks, since we have the Ace and King, but they will certainly make two.

In your mind are you thinking this is all too easy? Well then lets look at this question. What happens if we play diamonds instead, will the contract make?

The trick count analysis for playing diamonds

We still have our original 7 quick tricks (2 hearts, 1 diamond, 4 clubs). 

IF diamonds break 2-2, we will have 4 total diamond tricks. Recounting tricks this will give 2 hearts, 4! diamonds, 4 clubs. Total of 10 tricks. 

Our loser count will be two spades (those are the opponents quick tricks) and only 1 diamond. Can you see why we don't have any heart losers? Because the opponents don't have the time to knock out our second heart stopper, before we have set up our diamonds and therefore 10 tricks. So the full hand will be us making 10 tricks, and the opponents making 3.

BUT, what if diamonds break 3-1? 

We will now expect only 3 diamond tricks. Recounting tricks, that gives us 2 hearts, 3 diamonds, 4 clubs. Totalling 9 tricks. That sounds fine doesn't it? Its not fine, and counting winners is only half the job. Now count losers

Losers are 2 spades, 2 hearts, 2 diamonds. Totalling 6 losers. Why 2 hearts? Because the opponents will have time to pry open the heart suit before we have set up our diamonds. Whats the conclusion? If we go after diamonds and they break 3-1 we will go two off, making only 7 tricks because we will lose 6 tricks. If we go after diamonds and they break 2-2 we will make 10 tricks. However, if we just go after spades, we will guarantee 9 tricks. 

This is exactly the analysis you need to do at the table if you want to play top level bridge.

Lots more examples and articles to come on this topic. 

Where to next

• -> Next: Declarer Play Basics: Build a Plan at Trick One
• -> Related: Draw Trumps or Delay: Make the Right Plan
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