There is nothing like a Fit

	K Q J 6
	A K Q 8 4 2
	Q
	A K
3		9 8 7
3		J 10 9 6 5
A K J 10 6 3 2		9 8 7
Q 8 5 2		7 6
	A 10 5 4 2
	7
	5 4		Vul: E-W
	J 10 9 4 3		Opening lead: K of diamonds

South	West	North	East
Pass	3	5 !	Pass
5	Pass	6	All pass

Oh, please. How can anyone, after cuebidding to ask for his partner's best suit, look at that marvellous spade fit and bid hearts? And they're both majors! Could South possibly have been cue-bidding his hearts, meaning to confirm the spades in a search for grand slam? I dunno. Either interpretation makes the 6 heart bid look pretty bad. As stated within the past week, that powerful long suit will win just as many tricks (given the fit) as a side suit as it would as trump. You don't need to name it trump to get its full value and don't want to name it trump with a balanced spade suit sitting there. Or, if it was a wrongheaded attempt to say, "okay, for spades, and by the way, I've got hearts, do you wanna go for the grand?" I can only say, you just can't afford to make ambiguous bids at the six level. Take your little slam and be happy. (On this bidding scheme, the above hand would be played from the North hand, of course.) That was costly. Very costly. Minus 9.88 IMP's when making 6 spades was plus 8.05, for roughly 18 IMP's!

Or was the heart bid, per se, costly in itself? For not everyone in 6 spades was making it! In fact, four went down, one going down 2 tricks! One declarer, looking at the above layout, where clearly he would want to play it as a dummy reversal, conceding one diamond trick, drawing trump and establishing the 6th heart, with all the right entries there, failed to see it that way. Here's how it went: A of diamonds, 10 of diamonds continued, ruffed with the jack (!), two rounds of trump by the K and Q and now the A K of clubs! The A K of clubs. But those are such lovely entries which you're so desperately going to need on the uneven heart break. Why are they wiped out so early? Was there a reason for it? Indeed, there was.

Now came three rounds of hearts (nothing daunted by a trump remaining out but you know he's going to get his come-uppance pretty soon, no?), ruff a heart, jack of clubs, covered, ruffed with the 6 and overruffed! Ya know sumpin'? Had he not ruffed the second round of diamonds high -- was he expecting a 9-card suit in one hand? -- he would have had it. It's not the line I would recommend for the obvious reason that if declarer simply draws trump and ruffs out the 4th and 5th rounds of hearts, using club honors for re-entry, he'll have his contract without a ruffing finesse.

Oh-oh, I mispoke. Declarer would not have had it on that line, with the jack of spades in dummy, if West ducks the jack of clubs. He has it only if West obliges with the queen, allowing declarer to ruff high. No, that is definitely an inferior line of play. And the hand is so simple. Draw three rounds of trump, take three rounds of hearts, ruff a heart, back with a club, ruff a heart and dummy's good.

Here's another faulty line: Ruffing the second diamond low, three rounds of trump, three rounds of hearts, ruff a heart, back with the ace of clubs. Can't find anything wrong with that, huh? And now the king of clubs. Now the king of clubs! Why on earth! This declarer was just one more heart ruff away from claiming. Now she ruffed a heart with the ace of spades, and that lovely 8 of hearts went useless onto West's queen of clubs, which was the setting trick.

Another declarer did much the same thing except at a different point in the hand: A heart lead! Okay. Three rounds of trump, two more hearts cashed and a heat ruffed. So far, so good. Back to the ace of clubs and then king of clubs! Oh, I see declarer's scheme. Not getting a diamond lead, this declarer sluffed two diamonds on the heart honors and thought he was gaining. The problem was that he was thinking of an absence of diamond losers rather than the presence of 12 winners. Ruffing that diamond gives declarer the same trump winner as ruffing a heart. But ruffing a heart establishes the 6th heart as a winner! So how would you like to spend the closed hand's last trump? I hope that's regarded as a rhetorical question.In fact, it does him less good!

At trick 12, the 8 of hearts went to the jack, and 9 of diamonds actually won the last and setting trick. So declarer did have to lose a diamond trick on the hand after all!

And now the declarer who went down 2 in six spades. Diamond opening lead and then a switch to hearts, the ace winning, and now the two of hearts was ruffed with the two of spades -- and overruffed, of course. Down already at trick three! You've got the top five trump and declarer can't spare the ace for a ruff there? No excuse. Further, you don't need to ruff a heart, given all those entries, until trump are out!

Now West went back to diamonds, ruffed with the jack -- again? -- one round of trump, two more hearts, 8 of hearts ruffed, club back to the ace, the four of hearts ruffed! This not only should have been recognized as a winner, but declarer's RHO had been the only one following to hearts and now sluffed off! How can it be ruffed. Now the ace of spades, which was only the second round of trump, and a club to the ace was ruffed (East having sluffed a club on the last heart).

I have to make a confession, which is that I have never been particularly adept at a type of counting so beloved by professional columnists. And that's the counting of an opponent's hcp's and deducing that he can't have another big card or he would have had an opening bid, or conversely, deducing that he must have another big card for his opening bid. I simply have not been oriented to that type of counting, in part, I suppose, because I've never noticed a hand, or had a partner point out a hand, where such a count would have worked.

Anyway, my point isn't to suggest that the columnists are beating a minor topic to death (though I may feel that way), but that the types of counting I have often advocated and pointed out would have saved the day are elementary compared to that, where you have to remember the bidding (though I believe in OKBridge you can get a recap) and the honors the opps have played and do easily as much adding and subtracting as are necessary in "my" type of counting. Here declarer only has to look at his 26 cards.

You've got the top 5 trump with only 4 out against you. That can't be difficult, can it? So you can afford to ruff a heart with the ace (or 10) (if ruff you must). If everyone follows, your hearts are now established and you are now on claim with the worst possible spade split you could get. And if someone doesn't follow, you won't be sorry you ruffed high, would you? You haven't wasted the ace (or ten) because you didn't need it (for drawing trump).

I said "if ruff you must" above, for of course, you don't need to ruff a heart at all. One round of spades will tell you that trump can't be worse than 3-1, meaning you'll have two trump left in the closed hand after trump are all out. Which means you'll be able to ruff two hearts after drawing trump and get back by way of club honors. That too is not a brain-busting conundrum, is it?

You might note that ruffing a heart (high) immediately would be called for if the club honors were split, dummy holding only A or K doubleton (or if there's a club shift at trick 2). Now you're going to need one re-entry to the North hand by way of trump, or you're going to be one short: Get back (after ruffing high), drawing three rounds of trump, and now you have K Q x x in hearts and East has J 10 x, and one more ruff will do it, the lone club honor sufficing to get back. Indeed, this hand could be made if dummy had no club honors, both being in the closed hand. You're still going to need spades to be no worse than 3-1, of course, but that is there. Hence:

Say a diamond lead and continuation. Ruff low. A of hearts, low heart, ruff high, trump back, low heart, ruff high, trump back, draw last trump and claim. You don't need to count clubs. You don't need to count diamonds, except perhaps to note that W would need a rather rare 9-card suit for a low ruff second round to be wrong -- and perhaps figure that you're far more likely to get a 5-1 heart split than a 9-1in diamonds! You do need to count your hearts and you do need to count your spades. But these additions and subtractions don't get past 13! When you see 9 trump, you just know they have 4. When you see 7 hearts and everyone follows to the first round, you know they've got 4 left and they may or may not all be in the same hand.

On that hand where the opening lead is a heart, what are the odds for a 5-1 split in that heart suit? This was the opening lead and hearts were not bid, though implied, if you will, by a takeout double over one diamond. You can go to the mathematical table and look up 5-1 splits, but I say the odds are significantly greater than what that table shows. On this hand. How so? And could they possibly be higher where West leads a diamond and continues diamonds?

I guess I'd have to say no. The odds must be the same for you as for all your counterparts, which doesn't mean much, since you can't see what they're getting for opening leads. Nevertheless, I say the choices made by the opponents may not challenge the odds, which are a generalization over all bridge hands, but they should make declarer think beyond simple odds. After all, you don't play hands a thousand at a time, but one at a time. If your RHO pre-empts 3 diamonds and you subsequently get the bid and see 5 diamonds between your hand and dummy, you're not going to be surprised if RHO has 7 diamonds, meaning LHO has a singleton, are you? With A x x opposite Q x in your hand, you're not going to duck that in a trump contract, are you?

This is a fairly self-evident situation just to establish my point that the textbook odds sometimes won't tell you as much as the opps' choice of bids or leads. On any trump contract, I would look on an opponent's lead of a side suit as possibly indicating a singleton. Sometimes you simply can't help but play your opponents for having at least two cards even in a suit initiated by them. Here you don't even need to reflect on the odds. You don't need to know how hearts are splitting, as long as they're not 6-0. Nevertheless, if I got an opening lead there in an unbid suit after LHO had bid diamonds twice, I would strongly suspect a singleton.

Whoa! This is one on me. When I went back to see the IMP's for making six spades, I noted that 2 made 7! Obviously you don't get a diamond lead, in which case the dummy reversal is clearly called for to avoid that club hook that one declarer took. But I was so caught in diamond leads and how easily the hand makes on a dummy reversal, plus noting how one declarer thought he was saving something by discarding a diamond, which in fact led to down one, that I didn't note how else to play the hand on a heart lead.

These two declarers found an unimpeachable line to 13 tricks without risking anything. They let the heart suit go hang after the top three were cashed, sluffing two diamonds (trump first, of course). Now the clubs were cashed. A heart was ruffed, and the jack of clubs led. When the queen of clubs covered (and of course declarer must push the jack through if uncovered, or he's going down), they were both on claim for 13 tricks. A pittance in IMP's (from 8.05 to 8.52), but well played, the type of play that gives you confidence in your partner.