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Posted on Mon, Aug 6, 2012 : 5 a.m.

Bridge column, August 6: How to lose unwanted losers

By Phillip Alder

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Eric Berne was a Canadian-born psychiatrist who created transactional analysis and wrote "Games People Play." He said: "A loser doesn't know what he'll do if he loses, but talks about what he'll do if he wins. A winner doesn't talk about what he'll do if he wins, but knows what he'll do if he loses."

Recently I have been asked by students and by readers of this column how to count losers as declarer in a trump contract. I was then surprised to discover that I have not specifically covered this topic in any of my theme weeks. Let's lose no time in rectifying that oversight.

Assuming your hand has more trumps than the dummy, you look at your 13 cards, take dummy's high cards into account, and work out what tricks you might lose.

You are South, in four spades. How many losers do you have?

You should see four: one spade, two diamonds and one club.

And given that the lead has been the diamond queen, if you win the first or second diamond trick and immediately play a trump, you should lose those four tricks. How can you eliminate that extra loser?

There are two common ways of getting rid of a loser. First, you can take a discard. Look at the hearts. That suit will provide three winners, and on the third round you can discard a diamond, cutting your loser count to three. So, after taking the diamond ace, cash the heart queen (the honor from the shorter side first), play a heart to dummy's king, and pitch a diamond on the heart ace. Then, with your loser count not too high, draw trumps as quickly as possible.

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