CHAPTER 22

Trumping Losers

Remember that your partner is on your side.

The delightful aspect of counting losers is that there is a chance to get rid of them. In this chapter, we will focus on using the trumps in the dummy to get rid of losers in the declarer’s hand. You can go through four simple steps when planning to get rid of losers in your hand by trumping them in the dummy. First, you have to recognize the hand patterns where the opportunity exists. Second, the trumps in the dummy have to be carefully handled. Third, you have to know that you might have to play the suit more than once, perhaps giving up the lead while doing it. Finally, you have to arrange transport, or entries, to your hand so that you are in a position to put the plan into action. Let’s look at each of these steps in turn.

Recognising hand patterns

It is important to spot the characteristics in your hand and the dummy that offer the opportunity to trump losers in the dummy. The first step is to select a side suit in which there are more cards in your hand than there are in the dummy. Consider this hand. You are in a contract of 4 and the lead is the Q:

There are more hearts in your hand than there are in the dummy and so the heart suit offers a chance to get rid of losers by trumping them in the dummy. You can play a heart from your hand and, since the dummy is void, you can trump it. Then you can come back to your hand in another suit and again lead a heart, which you trump in dummy. If you come back to your hand a third time and play your final heart which you trump in the dummy, you will have disposed of all of your heart losers in your hand by trumping them in the dummy. The sequence of plays would be:

Win the first trick with the A. Lead the 4 and trump with the 2. Play a diamond to your K. Trump the 9 with the 3. Play a spade to your 10. Trump the 10 with the J. Cash the A and trump a diamond. Now – and only now – are you in a position to draw trumps! It is an important principle that if you intend to trump losers in the dummy, you must have enough trumps to do this, which may mean that you have to put off the drawing of trumps until quite late in the hand.

Here are three other possible layouts for the heart suit. Which ones offer a chance to trump a loser in the dummy?

In the first example, you have three cards in your hand and only two in the dummy, so there is an opportunity to trump a loser in the dummy. In the second example, there are again more hearts in your hand than there are in the dummy, so you have the chance to trump losers in the dummy. In the third example, however, there are more hearts in the dummy than there are in your hand. This is not the pattern that gives you a chance to trump losers in the dummy.

Handling the tramps in the dummy

It seems obvious, but the only way you can trump losers in the dummy is to have some trumps in the dummy to do the job. If you have a lot of trumps in the dummy, this will usually not present a problem. On many hands, however, your trumps have to be carefully handled in order to preserve the number of the dummy’s trumps you need to take care of the losers in your hand. Consider the following example. We’ll focus on only two suits: the trump suit, spades, and a side suit, hearts.

Count the losers in hearts and spades, concentrating on your hand. There are no losers in spades and there are two losers in hearts. Since the dummy has no hearts, the small trump cards can be used to take care of your heart losers. Now, decide how many trumps you will need to take care of your losers. In this example, you need both of the trumps in the dummy. You cannot draw even one round of trumps. Your first priority has to be to get rid of your heart losers.

You plan to play a heart from your hand and trump it in the dummy. That will eliminate one heart loser and use up one of dummy’s trump cards. You then need to get back to your hand to repeat the process, but you cannot do it with a spade. The remaining spade in the dummy is needed to take care of your second heart loser. You can’t have your cake and eat it too. You will have to find another way to get back into your hand. Let’s assume that you have an entry in another suit enabling you to get back to your hand. You can then play your remaining heart and trump it in the dummy.

By using your trump cards in the dummy separately, you get rid of both losers. You end up taking eight tricks – the six high spades in your hand will all take tricks and you get two tricks with the small spades in the dummy. Notice that you trumped losers in the dummy, not in your hand, in order to get the extra tricks. How many trumps would you need in the dummy to take care of the losers in your hand in each of the following side suits?

In the first example, you have two more cards in the diamond suit in your hand than you have in the dummy so you would need two of dummy’s trumps to take care of the losers. In the next example, you have two more cards in your hand than in the dummy and so again you would need two of the dummy’s trumps to take care of the losers. In the final example, you would need four of the dummy’s trumps to take care of all four of your losers. You can see that you may not always have enough trumps to do the job. In the next chapter, we’ll look at another way of getting rid of losers in case you can’t trump them in the dummy.

Trumping in the declarer’s hand

Let’s change the layout of the suits from our earlier example:

In your hand, you have no losers in spades or hearts. If you were to play a heart from the dummy and trump it in your hand, you would gain nothing since you would be using a trump which would be a winner in any case. You only gain tricks when you are able to trump losers in the hand with the shorter trumps, which are usually in the dummy. You can avoid thinking you are getting extra tricks by trumping in the long side, in this case in your hand, by focusing on the hand pattern. Since you do not have more cards in the heart suit in your hand than are in the dummy, this is not the pattern you are looking for. Look for hand patterns in which the declarer has more cards in a side suit than there are in the dummy.

Getting ready to trump losers in the dummy

It is convenient to have a void in the dummy when you are planning to trump losers, but this won’t always be the case. Sometimes you have to do a little work to create the void in dummy. Again, let’s focus on a hand where spades are trumps and hearts are one of your side suits:

You have no spade losers and three heart losers. When you look to the dummy, you can see an opportunity to get rid of two, not three, of your heart losers by trumping them. You will need two spades in the dummy to trump your losing hearts. You will also have to lose a heart trick before the dummy has a heart void and you are in a position to trump your losers.

What are your priorities? How are you going to handle your trumps? Should you draw one round of trumps? You only need two spades to take care of your losing hearts. Look at what might happen if you decide to draw one round of trumps. You are still left with two spades in the dummy, which may seem to be enough ... if you didn’t have opponents. When you give up a heart trick to the opponents, they may lead a spade, leaving you with only one spade in the dummy and two heart losers in your hand.

Don’t take that chance. Your first consideration is to get rid of your heart losers, so first play the heart suit right away. The opponents may lead a spade but you can win the trick and still have two spades left in the dummy. Play a heart and trump it. Come back to your hand in another suit and play your third heart and trump it. You will take the six trump tricks in your hand and two trumps in the dummy which you used on your heart suit. Now, let’s take this idea one step further.

Again, you have three heart losers in your hand. Is there any opportunity to get rid of them? You could get rid of one heart loser after the two hearts have been played from the dummy. How many trumps do you need? Only one. Whenever you are in a trump contract, the priority of drawing the opponents’ trump cards should be on your mind. Should this be a priority in this hand? After all, you need only one trump card this time to take care of the heart loser.

Consider what would happen if you drew even one round of trumps. You would have only two spades left in the dummy and you have to give up the lead twice before you are in a position to trump your heart loser. On both occasions when the opponents get the lead, they could play a trump, removing your last two trump cards before you could use one of them on your heart loser. It is important, then, to play a heart before touching the trumps, even once. If the defenders lead trumps each time they get the lead, they will only be able to take two rounds and you would still have one left to take care of your final heart.

The opportunity to trump a loser in the dummy exists whenever the declarer has more cards in the suit than the dummy. If the declarer has cards in the suit and the dummy has a void, there is an immediate opportunity to trump losers. Most of the time, however, the declarer has to play the suit, once, twice or more, in order to create the void so that one of the dummy’s small trumps can be used. Let’s look at a complete hand. You are in a part-score contract of 2 and the opening lead is the 4.

Contract: 2

Let’s go through the plan. First our goal. In a contract of 2 , we can afford five losers. We tally our losers. There is none in spades, two in hearts, one in diamonds and three in clubs. That totals six losers, one too many. The next step is to consider how we can eliminate one of our losers. The 4 is led and after our A is gone, we have two losers. There does not seem to be the opportunity to get rid of a heart loser. Consider the diamonds. There are only two in our hand. Perhaps the queen in the dummy could win a trick but, as you can see on the actual layout of the cards, the K could be held by East. It would do no good to trump one of the dummy’s diamonds in our hand since that would not eliminate any losers. The pattern we are looking for is to have more cards in a side suit in our hand than we do in the dummy. In the diamond suit we have more cards in the dummy than we do in our hand. That leads us, finally, to the club suit.

Since there are more clubs in your hand than there are in the dummy, there is the opportunity to trump a club. First, however, you have to play two rounds of the suit so that there is a void in the dummy. Each time you give up the lead to the opponents while you are creating this void in the dummy, they can lead a spade. Since you have to give up the lead twice, they are able to play spades twice, leaving you with one left in the dummy. Notice that if you drew even one round of spades, you would run out of the trumps in the dummy needed to take care of the club loser. On this hand, your first priority is to play the clubs after winning the A.

Preserving your entries

On to the last step to consider when trumping losers. You have seen that, in order to trump a loser in the dummy, you have to be in your hand to lead the loser that you plan to trump. This means that you may have to preserve entries back to your hand. First, look at the layout of this side suit:

You have more cards in the suit in your hand than in the dummy, so you have recognized the pattern for trumping losers in the dummy. You need one trump to take care of your losing club. You first have to play the clubs twice in order to get ready to trump in the dummy. Ask yourself which hand you would like to end up in after you have played two rounds of clubs. You want to end up in your hand, so that you can lead the third club and trump it in the dummy. So, win the first trick with the K in the dummy and play the 4 back to your A. Now you are in the right hand to play a third round of clubs.

Sometimes, the suit containing the losers may not provide the entry and you will have to look for an entry in another suit. You usually have a lot of high cards in the trump suit but you may not be able to use the trump suit since you need your trumps. Suppose you are planning to trump a loser in this suit:

The first two times you play this suit, it does not matter which side of the table you are on. After the suit has been played twice, however, you want to be in your hand to play the third round. You have to be careful to keep a high card in another side suit in your hand as a means of transport back to your hand.

Summary

The opportunity to trump losers in the dummy exists when the declarer has more cards in his hand in a side suit than in the dummy. You need to keep the appropriate number of trumps in the dummy to do the job. Sometimes the dummy has a void and the opportunity to trump a loser immediately exists. At other times, the declarer has to play the side suit once or twice until dummy has a void in the suit. The declarer has to keep an eye on the entries back to his hand and make sure there are enough to be able to get there so that he can lead the suit he wants to trump in the dummy.

Over Zia’s shoulder

Hand 1 Dealer: South

N	E	S (Zia)	W
		1	Pass
3	Pass	4	Pass
Pass	Pass

This time we are going to STOP and make our plan with the focus on the losers, since we are playing in a suit contract.

Solution to Hand 1:

Contract: 4

S	We can afford only three losers.
T	We tally our losers and see that we could lose three club tricks – probably the first three tricks since the opponents have led a club – and a diamond trick.
O	Let’s organize a plan to get rid of the diamond loser. We know our partner will not appreciate it if we don’t make this contract after we accepted his invitation. The diamond loser could be eliminated by trumping the third diamond in the dummy. We will need one heart left after we draw trumps. If at all possible, drawing trumps is a priority. In this hand we have complete control since we don’t have to give up the lead while accomplishing our task.
P	Let’s put the plan into action. After the opponents get the first three club tricks they have to give us the lead. Now we draw the trumps, and on this hand that requires only two rounds of the suit since the opponents’ trumps are divided 2–2. Then we play the diamonds by taking the A, K and trumping the third in the dummy. There’s no problem left in taking the rest of the tricks.

Hand 2 Dealer: West

N	E	S (Zia)	W
			Pass
Pass	Pass	1	Pass
2	Pass	3	Pass
4	Pass	Pass	Pass

We have been bidding in our usual aggressive manner, but considering we haven’t gone down yet on any hand, let’s continue with that style. This hand looks a bit harder, and West always seems to have an honour to lead!

Solution to Hand 2:

Contract: 4

We STOP before playing the first card; this hand isn’t so easy.

S	We can afford three losers.
T	Our tally tells us that we have two spade losers, two diamond losers and a club loser – two too many.
O	We can plan to get rid of the two spade losers by trumping them in the dummy. Normally, after winning the first trick with the A, we might consider drawing the trumps. If they are divided 2–2, this would be fine. We could keep two trumps in the dummy to take care of the spade losers and could use our hearts to get back to our hand by trumping clubs. However, if the trumps are divided 3–1 or 4–0, we can’t draw all of them. We cannot even afford to draw two rounds of trumps. Once our A is driven out, we will have no way to get back quickly to our hand to trump the fourth spade. The opponents can lead a third round of trumps and down we go. We can only draw one round of trumps and must then start to trump our losers.
P	We win the A and play one round of trumps, winning with the dummy’s Q. Then, we play the K from the dummy which will win the trick and a small spade to the A in our hand. We are in the right hand to trump our first spade loser. With two trumps left in dummy, we can use one of them to come back to our hand and now we can trump the second spade loser. We’ll draw the opponent’s remaining trump when we are next back in our hand. Task accomplished. Put the cards out and try drawing two rounds of trumps to see what happens.

Hand 3 Dealer: South

N	E	S (Zia)	W
		1	Pass
1	Pass	2	Pass
2	Pass	Pass	Pass

This is not an unwelcome dummy in a modest 2 contract – but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t give it our best. But just what is our best?

Solution to Hand 3:

Contract: 2

S	We can afford five losers.
T	Our tally tells us we have a spade loser, four diamond losers and a club loser – a total of six, one too many.
O	Pausing after the opening lead (you did, didn’t you?) and making a plan tells us that by simply playing on diamonds before the trumps, we can ruff (trump) at least one of our losing diamonds in the dummy. This is another case of delaying drawing trumps when there is something more urgent to do.
P	Win the A and lead a diamond. Even if the opponents win and lead a trump, we can win and lead another diamond. They can lead a second trump but we win the race and can trump one of our diamond losers in the dummy.