The Tuscaloosa News – 10 Jul 1966
The expression “counting the hand” represents bridge thought at its best. It also is fairly easy if you get in the habit of starting your count early and bear in mind that when you know how many cards a player holds in three suits then by simple subtraction from 13 you know the total in the fourth. Everyone at the table except South scraped the bottom of the barrel in order to find bids. With 19 high card points, South was well within bounds when he jumped to three no-trump.
South won the second heart and went to dummy with the queen of clubs in order to lead the ten of diamonds for a finesse. West won with the king and, for want of anything better to do, returned the suit. Usually, when both sides play the same suit one is wrong but this time both sides were playing correctly. South checked off two hearts for West. Had West held another heart, West would have led that suit.
South ran the rest of his diamonds while West followed. South checked off four diamonds. Then South took his ace and king of clubs and checked off two clubs when West discarded on the last club lead. This meant that West had started with five spades and was still holding four of them. East therefore held only one spade. South played his king of spades. West took his ace and led the suit back. He couldn’t do anything else because he was down to spades. South ducked in dummy and let the trick ride around to his ten spot. There was no danger in the play. South knew that East had no more spades just as surely as if East had exposed his hand.