Counting Losers: Suit Declarer Play
Counting Losers
When you are in a suit contract, you should normally count your losers rather than your winners; it is a more difficult process to get the hang of than counting winners but makes it easier to plan the play on most hands.
The process
The easiest way to count is suit by suit.
Process for counting losers:
- Choose a base hand. This should be the hand with the longer trumps; if you have equal length, choose the hand with the longer (or stronger) side suit.
- Look at your first suit. How many cards do you hold in that suit in the base hand? Let’s call this number c.
- Taking into account both your hand and the dummy, find the highest card you hold in the suit and imagine playing it now. Will it win the trick?
- Carry out step 3 c times, moving down to the second-highest card, then the third-highest, etc.
- How many tricks have you lost in the suit?
Let’s look at some examples.
(1) Short hand: ♠ K32
Base hand: ♠ A54
c = 3
1 – The A will win the trick.
2 – Then the K will win the trick.
3 – Then the 5 will lose.
= 1 loser
(2) Short hand: ♠ K32
Base hand: ♠ A5
c = 2
1 – The A will win the trick.
2 – Then the K will win the trick.
= 0 losers
(3) Short hand: ♠ K2
Base hand: ♠ A54
c = 3
1 – The A will win the trick.
2 – Then the K will win the trick.
3 – Then the 5 will lose.
= 1 loser
(4) Short hand: ♠ 32
Base hand: ♠ A654
c = 4
1 – The A will win the trick.
2 – Then the 6 will lose the trick.
3 – Then the 5 will lose the trick.
4 – Then the 4 will also lose the trick.
= 3 losers
Taking the lead into account
Sometimes, your LHO’s lead will have given you a trick: normally, this is in a situation where you have a gap between two honours in your own hand. A holding like this is called a tenace; we will discuss tenaces in greater detail in a later lesson. Look again at this example from the previous lesson.
(5) Dummy: ♦ 32
Declarer: ♦ AQ
Lead: ♦ 6
If LHO had led a different suit, you would have a loser in ♦ because you have the A but not the K: when you play the Q, the K will beat it.
Now that a ♦ has been led, imagine how the trick will go. RHO is either going to play the ♦K or not.
- If RHO plays the ♦K, you will take it with your ♦A and your ♦Q will now be the top card in the suit.
- If RHO plays low, you can win cheaply with your ♦Q.
c = 2 and both cards are accounted for, so you therefore have no losers in this suit.
Discarding Losers on Extra Winners
The simplest way of getting rid of losers is by discarding them on extra winners in the short hand.
Extra winners: Winners that are not already being used to cover a loser in the base hand.
Short hand: The hand with the shorter trump holding (i.e. not the base hand).
Here’s an example hand for you to look at.
(6) Dummy: ♠ K75 ♥ QJT ♦ AK73 ♣ 742
Declarer: ♠ A83 ♥ AK9876 ♦ 5 ♣ J63
Contract 4♥, Lead ♣A
a. How many losers do you have?
Using the declaring hand as the base hand, you have 1 loser in ♠, none in ♥, none in ♦ and 3 in ♣ = 4 losers.
You are currently going to go one down in your contract!
b. How will you get rid of one of your losers?
It looks like the opponents have already pinpointed your weakness in ♣ and shouldn’t struggle to take their 3 top ♣s. You need to get rid of your ♠ loser.
Notice that, while the ♦A is being used to cover the ♦5 in the base hand, the ♦K isn’t doing anything useful: it is an extra winner. However, you can discard a small ♠ on the ♦K; although c is currently 3 in ♠, it will then go down to 2: the ♠A and ♠K can then take care of the suit!