Count Your Tricks

When you are declarer and the dummy comes down, the first thing that you need to do is "count your tricks." There are three different tricks to count, and all are important:

Count your sure winners.
Count your potential winners.
Count your losers.

We'll look at each in turn.

Counting your sure winners

These are the tricks that you know you will take once you get the lead. Let's just look at some suits in isolation:

Yes, it's laughable, but illustrative nonetheless. You have zero winners in spades. Sorry.

Let's try another:

Now you have two sure winners: the ace and king of spades. In the next hand, you also have two winners: the ace in the dummy, and the king in your hand:

Long suits with high cards have many more winners than shorter suits with high cards. Take a look at the following two hands and count sure winners:

Both hands have the same cards, but the left hand has seven sure winners, while the right hand only has four. This is because you have to follow suit. Take this concept to the extreme, and you'll see that the following hand only has one winner, even though it has the top two cards in the suit:

Counting your potential winners

Sure winners are kind of dull -- one of the main challenges when you are declaring a bridge hand is to spot potential winners and develop them into winning tricks. Here are five example hands:

Let's go over the potential winners in each hand:

(a): This hand has five potential winners: If you can get your opponents to win the ace of spades, then all of the spades in the dummy are high.
(b): The potential winners in this hand depend on how the remaining spades are divided in your opponents' hands. You have nine spades between your hand and the dummy, which means that the opponents have four spades between them. If each opponent has two spades, then the opponents will be out of spades when you cash the ace and king of spades. However, if one opponent has three spades and the other has one, then after you win the ace and king of spades, you will have to lose a spade before the rest of dummy's spades are winners. Therefore you have two sure winners and three more potential winners. If one opponent holds four spades and the other has none, then you have two sure winners and only two more potential winners.
(c): This hand is similar to (b). You have one sure winner, and if the remaining spades are divided such that each opponent has three spades, you have one more potential winner.
(d): You have one sure winner, and the queen of spades provides you a potential winner. Its potential is based on which opponent holds the king of spades. If your left-hand opponent (LHO) holds it, then if you lead from your hand towards the dummy, LHO is in a bind. If he plays low, you will win your queen. If he plays the king, then you will win your ace, and your queen is high. This is called a finesse. If your right-hand opponent (RHO) holds the king of spades, then your queen is no longer a potential winner.
(e): You have one sure winner - the ace of spades. You have five more potential winners in the dummy, but only if you can manage to get the lead in the dummy. This is called a transportation issue.

Counting your losers

Let's take three examples from the above hands:

In (a), you have one loser, the ace of spades.
In (b), the number of losers really depends on the contract, your hand, and your opponents' hands. If hearts are trumps and you have an abundance of them, then this hand has two spade losers, because once your hand is out of spades, you can trump them if your opponents lead them. If you are playing in notrump, then the number of spade losers depends on how the opponents' spades are divided. You will have at least four losers, and maybe more.
In (c), the number of losers again depends on the contract and the hands. If hearts are trumps and you have a lot of them, then you have two losers in spades. If you don't have many trumps or you are in a notrump contract, then you have at least two losers in spades, and maybe more. If the opponents' spades divide 3-3, then you only have two losers. However, if they divide differently, you may have more losers.

Managing a Hand

So, after counting sure winners, identifying potential winners and counting losers, declarer should try to figure out the best way to take those potential winners and avoid potential losers. The situations that will present themselves are nearly infinite, and that's what makes bridge fun. Here is a relatively simple example. Suppose you are in a game contract in notrump with the following hand, and the opponents lead a heart.

Count your sure winners: you have six: the ace of hearts, the ace-king of diamonds, and the ace, king & queen of clubs.

Count your potential winners: You have four potential winners in spades, and you have anywhere from two to four potential winners in diamonds, depending on how the suit divides. (If this confuses you, reread the section above on potential winners).

Now, count your losers: The ace of spades is one, and you have anywhere from zero to two losers in diamonds. The real danger suit is hearts. If they divide 5-4, then you'll have four losers once your ace is gone, and if they divide otherwise, you'll lose even more.

So, how should you play this hand? You need nine tricks to make your contract. One approach would be to win the ace of hearts and play on spades, flushing out the ace. That will guarantee you four winners in spades to go with your six other winners. Is there a problem with that approach? Yes -- since your ace of hearts is gone, when your opponents win the ace of spades, they will also cash their hearts, winning at least four more tricks. You will not make your contract.

A better approach is to play the ace and king of diamonds, and hope that diamonds break evenly. Then you can cash your remaining four diamonds and you will make ten tricks. What if diamonds don't break evenly? Then you are going to be set. However, that's life. Sometimes you will make your contract and sometimes you will not. However, playing on diamonds gives your the best chance of making your contract, while playing on spades gives you zero chance.