17 Planning a suit contract

In a NT contract we start by counting our winners. In trumps you can do that also but I prefer to count my losers and then look for ways to bring that number down to the affordable level. Say I am in 4H, I can afford to lose three tricks, so if my count reveals four immediate losers I have a problem, and the game plan involves finding a way to avoid at least one loser. You have to account for every card in your hand. One motto is Dump, trump, finesse. These three winning ways are in order of preference. If you can establish a long strong side suit in dummy (or one is already looking at you from the table) then you can throw losers from your hand.. If your contract looks good from this method, then you can afford to draw trumps first to be secure. Otherwise, the second method trump will be used. Care: this means ruff in dummy, NOT in hand, and it very often should be adopted before drawing trumps. I shall no doubt return to this point later.

Finessing is a last resort, and in any case is best delayed until the play of the tricks has given clues where your missing card is located.

Suit contracts are more complex than NT because of the trump factor. Drawing trumps will ensure that your side suit tricks will not be ruffed by the defence, but every time you draw a round of trumps, your dummy trumps shrink, so depriving you of a possible ruff.  That’s why you often need to set about dummy-ruffing as soon as possible. [Note to defenders: It is also why you can stop the declarer’s game by leading trumps at every opportunity, including the opening lead.]

Why should we shrink from trumping in our hand unless we have to? I often think that defenders should be called attackers, because that is what they really are. When they lead a suit you are out of, you have to trump it, and that means that your suit of  armour has become less strong. When your last trump has disappeared, you are vulnerable, in that word’s real sense. You are at the attackers’ mercy.

Think dummy ruffs from the start.