Dealer North. Love All

                                    ♠          K 7 5 3

                                    ♥          A K J 5 4

                                    ♦          8

                                    ♣         J 8 5

            ♠          Q J 9                           ♠          A

            ♥          9 2                               ♥          Q 10 8 6

            ♦          J 9 7 6 2                     ♦          A K Q 5 4

            ♣         10 4 2                         ♣         9 7 3

                                    ♠          10 8 6 4 2

                                    ♥          7 3

                                    ♦          10 3

                                    ♣         A K Q 6

On our hand this week we have to count both winners and losers and when we count the losers it will be very illuminating.

Initially we have ONLY 6 winners with four top clubs and 2 top Hearts and nothing else at the moment.- potential in the trump suit of course.

When things are down like this it is now comforting to count losers and things will not be as bad as they first seemed.

Counting losers it seems we have no Heart losers and no Club losers and 1 Diamond loser (we can ruff after 1 round) and up to 2 trump losers. If this is the case we can make a safety play in trumps to try and keep the losers to just two.

If the trumps break 2:2 we don’t have a problem no matter where the Ace is and if the trumps break 3:1 with West holding the Ace we can lead up to dummy’s King. If West has three headed by the Ace we will have three losers no matter what happens and will go down. However if the suit breaks 3:1 with West holding a singleton Ace them the safety play is to start with a low card from each hand. If no Ace appears we can lead up to the King at our next opportunity. As the cards ie here the Ace is singleton With East and now we have just the two trump losers.

We will make 3 trumps from the long hand, 2 Hearts. 4 Clubs and a Diamond ruff in the short hand