Counting It Out

Let’s count it out.

When our opponents give us some action in the auction, our job is to use that information against them.

Our counting starts in the auction. Some overcalls are more descriptive than others, we should punish them for using such specific methods. Here South chooses to get into the auction with a double showing a 4 card major and a longer minor (5+).

Then, they make the opening lead of the ♠8. Looking at the cards between our two hands it really doesn’t seem like it’s a 4th best lead 🙂

So that means their four card major is Hearts! We know the distribution of the heart suit now without even playing a card from our hands. South has 4, West 4, North 3, and East 2.

Now, to figure out the minor. We know they have 5+ of one minor. And we have 7 diamonds between the two of us and only 6 clubs. Either is possible, but it’s leaning slightly towards clubs.

Which means between spades and diamonds, they likely only have 4 cards. ♠8 could be a doubleton, but honestly, it’s more likely it’s a singleton and they were trying to hit their partner’s long suit since they know West has a 4 card major and East does not. If they had 2 spades, it would probably suggest leading another suit (one of their own).

So at this point, our guess is South is 1435.

Does that help us much right now? Well, if we start thinking about points… South should have 10+ HCP usually, which leaves North with very few (if any). This suggests that one or both diamond finesses are likely off, but it does split 3-3. So we might find success in working on diamonds even from the wrong side.

South continues with the ♣5. What do we do now?

If South has both the KQ we should play the J, if they have only one of the top honors, we should play the 3.

Playing the requires exactly KQ in the South, if they have KQT, we can still play low. So because there are so many more ways to win by playing low, that’s what I would choose to do.

(We should also recognize that it’s even more likely they started with a singleton spade now, not pushing another one when they got back on lead.)

North wins the Q, and returns the ♠J. Where do we win this?

We should win this in the West hand, we now have an entry problem with the East hand and once we’ve set up the diamonds, we’ll need to access that hand again (through a guaranteed spade).

We take the diamond finesse (covering with the ♦Q) and lose to the ♦K.

They return a club, and this is the point of no return. We must finesse for the remaining honor in South’s hand. We have extra confidence in this as we’ve seen 3 HCP from North and they cannot have 3 additional points without putting South below 10 HCP (although it is possible they overcalled light). We play the ♣J, it wins, and now we can even take the luxury of setting up hearts before we play the diamonds.