Counting Winners: NT Declarer Play

Length: 10 minutes

Counting Winners

In a NT contract, when the dummy goes down, you should always start by counting your winners.

This is not a difficult process but you should not be too optimistic.

Winner: a trick that you can already take right at the beginning of the hand (“off the top”).

You may also hear these being referred to as “certain” or “sure” tricks.

Therefore, you cannot count your potential tricks as winners.

A trick is only a winner if playing it at the beginning of the hand will result in you winning the trick.

The easiest way to count is suit by suit.

Process for counting winners:

  1. Look at your first suit.
  2. Taking into account both your hand and the dummy, do you have the A?

– If you do not, move on to the next suit.

– If you do, this is a winner; continue to step 3.

  • Continue in this way, looking for the K next and going down card by card if you find you have another winner.

The relationship between length and winners

There is a trap! Watch out for suits where you have more top cards than length.

(1) Dummy: AK

      Declarer: QJ

Remember that, when you play your top card, you will be forced to follow suit from the other hand. Although you have 4 top cards in this suit, you only have 2 winners.

Compare the following example.

(2) Dummy: AK53

      Declarer: QJ4

Here, when you play the Q and J from your hand, you will be able to follow suit with the 5 and 3 from the dummy; you can now take all four of your top cards and you therefore have 4 winners.

Rule: You cannot win more tricks in a suit than the number of cards you hold in the longer side.

In (1), you have 2 cards in both hands, so you can never take more than 2 tricks in that suit.

In (2), you have 4 cards in the dummy (the longer holding), so you can take all four of your top cards.

In contrast, consider this suit.

(3) Dummy: AKQJ2

      Declarer: 654

Although you only hold the top 4 cards in the suit, you must remember that your opponents only hold 5 cards in that suit between them. Therefore, unless one opponent holds all 5, neither opponent will have any left by the time you have played the top 4 cards and your 2 will now be a winner.

In situations like this, you can consider normal suit breaks in order to decide whether you can count any length winners.

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.

(3) Dummy: ♦ 32

      Declarer: ♦ AQ

Lead: ♦ 6

If LHO had led a different suit, you would only have 1 winner in ♦ because you have the A but not the K.

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.

You therefore have 2 winners in this suit.

If the tenace is in the dummy, this is not normally the case.

(4) Dummy: ♦ AQ

      Declarer: ♦ 32

Lead: ♦ 6

Now, you will need to choose a card from the dummy before RHO. If you play the ♦Q and RHO has the ♦K, you will not win the trick. If you play the ♦A, the ♦K will still be at large and will be able to beat your ♦Q.

How to use your total number of winners to plan

Once you know how many tricks you have off the top, you need to decide which suit you will need to play to make up the shortfall between that and the number you need for your contract. Usually, you will start by working on your longest suit.

(5) Dummy: ♠ AK ♥ 543 ♦ KJT6 ♣ Q42

      Declarer: ♠ 863 ♥ AQ6 ♦ Q872 ♣ AK3

Contract: 3NT

Lead: ♠Q

How will you play this hand?

Winners: 2 ♠, 1 ♥, 0 ♦ and 3 ♣ = 6 winners

You need to take 9 tricks to make the contract; where are your other three tricks coming from?

Your longest suit is ♦ and you have 3 potential tricks there, once the ♦A has been forced out. You should do this immediately! Do not make the mistake of cashing your top tricks first; you need to hold on to those in order to keep control of the hand. If you have 6 winners and start by taking your 6 tricks, you will end up with 6 tricks when you need 9.

Win the ♠ lead and play a ♦. If the opponents take the ♦A, you will now have 3 ♦ winners to add to your total; if they duck, you have 1 more winner and can continue to play diamonds until the ♦A is finally tempted out.

Now try the quiz below! If you are struggling to visualise the scenarios, try dealing out the cards yourself.

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