This is aHand:

This series is all about playing the cards in suit contracts. In previous deals we have emphasized the necessity of drawing trumps. Well, there are many hands where that would be unwise. In these deals you need to ruff your losers before you pull the opponents' trumps.

How can you tell what type of hand it is? How can you tell as declarer whether you should draw trumps or not? Well, it's all down to counting. Much successful bridge play relies on counting skills. When dummy appears you must carefully count your winners. If you can see sufficient for your contract then – in general – you should draw trumps. If you can't see enough tricks then you should look to ruff some of your losers.

One crucial point of technique is not always understood. It is only worthwhile ruffing losers if you ruff in the short trump hand. If you have five trumps and dummy has three then ruffing in the hand with five trumps is unlikey to achieve anything at all. However, ruffing in the hand with three trumps will allow you extra tricks.

Hopefully, some of these deals will clarify this important point.

Hand 1 is a relatively simple affair.

Bidding.

We reach 4♠ as South after the auction 1♠ – 3♠ – 4♠. Partner’s invitational raise to the three-level of our 1♠ opening bid is normal enough. He has 10 points (even though the ♥Q is singleton) and four trumps, and we have just about sufficient to advance to game.

Play.

West has an easy opening lead of the ♣A and we contemplate the dummy. Having thanked partner for his contributions we must stop to Count and make a Plan.

Although the opponents are in charge of the field with their Clubs we should still think our way through the hand before we call for a card from dummy.

Here, we can see five Spades, one Heart and two Diamonds for a total of eight tricks so need to find two more from somewhere. When we have a shortfall of tricks it is usually unwise to draw trumps – certainly not until we have seen where we can make the “extras�.

An important technique that may help us out in this type of hand is to consider (and count) losers. To do this we need to focus on the South hand alone (declarer’s hand) and look through suit by suit. Then see if those losers can be eliminated by ruffing.

We can see no losers in Spades. In Hearts we have two losers but – thanks to the singleton in dummy – we can ruff the ♥8 7 on table. Our “losing� ♦6 is covered by dummy’s ♦A (so no losers in that suit) and we have three trashy Clubs – all losers. So we have three losers in total – all in Clubs.

We might, therefore, count eight winners and three losers – a baffling total since that doesn’t add up to thirteen. However, by ruffing two Hearts on table we actually make seven trump tricks (five trumps in hand and two ruffs in dummy). Added to the ♦A K and the ♥A that makes ten winners.

Note that ruffing Diamonds in hand is not right. This is like taking a spoonful of sugar: it might make you feel good in the short term but it is harmful in the long term.

The aim on this deal is to ruff losers in dummy – in the short trump hand. We have already counted five trump tricks – we won't make more by using them for ruffing purposes.

Let’s dot the is and cross the ts.

West cashes the ♣A K Q and – with nothing better to do – continues with the master ♣8. We ruff this and note that a sneaky East is pitching his Diamonds. It would be dangerous to try to cash the ♦A K before drawing trumps as East might get a Diamond ruff.

We immediately set about getting Heart ruffs. To that end we play off the ♥A and ruff a Heart. We need to return to hand so we play a Spade from the table and win with the ♠9 in hand, noting the 4-0 break.

A further Heart ruff is taken, this time with the ♠A. There are two reasons for this (three if we count being flashy!) One is that all the Spades are equals so it doesn’t matter which Spade we play. The second is that we need to return to hand to pull trumps. We can lead the last Spade and overtake it – but not if that last Spade is the Ace!

When in hand we extract all of East’s trumps and now – finally – we cash the ♦A K.