BRIDGE

Many really good plays to bring home touchy contracts can be a result of two complementary ingredients focused on counting: actual counting and drawing of inferences.

Against North-south’s power auction to four hearts, West hit on the best start for the defenders as his low spade lead found his partner at home with the ace and Queen sitting over dummy’s honours.

East grabbed his two winners before exiting passively with a low club to dislodge North’s ace.

And so it was going to be all about the trump suit: was there a logical way to avoid losing two tricks in the suit?

At one table of a match, declarer cashed the heart ace and continued the suit: when the defender’s Jack popped up, South went into a deep, brown study but no winning guess was possible and down one was soon recorded.

The other team’s declarer looked deeper into the situation: as East-west’s agreement was to lead low from three small cards and second high from four small, declarer read the spade suit as having started 3-4 with East having the greater length.

That meant one extra “vacant” space in the West hand to create reasonable odds that the hand with shorter spades might have longer hearts.

By such small differences can very large results be crafted and South found a way: low heart from dummy, just covering the eight with the nine to concede a trick to West’s ten.

The defender played back a club that declarer won in hand to advance the trump Queen, nicely trapping the King while pinning East’s Jack: a nicely reasoned “intra-finesse” had brought home the game.