Let us look at some classics today. And with a very good price, too... I have refrained from giving a suggestion because the price at Amazon was at 900 USD (!!!), but I am happy to mention one of the greatest books on declarer play for only 2 bucks.

I recently hit upon a very clean, crystal clear example of how counting in defense can direct you to an unintuitive play.

It is very easy to see intermediate or even advanced players getting confused about the proper signalling method when you are breaking a new suit in defense. 

It is quite common to see partnerships composed of players at an intermediate, or even at a beginner, level using very complex bidding conventions. 

Last week we were considering a defensive position.

Many times at the Bridge table, a player can commit a very costly error: trying to guess his opponents' cards based on his own beliefs and judgment about what is correct.

In any given bridge hand, the likelihood that the opening lead will be the most important card played is very high. More contracts are won (or lost) on the opening lead than on any other card. You will never be able to reach your highest bridge aspirations if you do not devote some study to the improvement of your opening leads. While defense is said to be the hardest part of bridge, the opening lead is the hardest part of the defense.

But this does not mean that the opening lead is a matter of chance. Quite the opposite: the expert makes the "killing lead" more often than the average player. There are some principles that help the expert when they are picking the opening lead, which can be employed profitably by all players. Above all, we must pay attention to the auction before leading. 

Perhaps the biggest difference between the expert and the average player in this department is that the expert chooses his lead taking the bidding into account, while the average player looks for the "table of opening leads" (AK, KQ, singletons, etc.) and picks his lead according to that table. There is nothing wrong with that -- the expert, other things being equal, also follows this routine. The problem is that the other things are very seldom equal!

Let us examine a simple example of this idea:

A nice looking hand. When Adam Stokka from Sweden held this hand, his partner passed and RHO opened 1 Heart.
What would you do? Most people would probably bid a simple 2 Diamonds, but I think a case can be made (facing a passed partner, and vul vs. non-vul) for the 3 Diamonds overcall.
Would it have made any difference? Perhaps, for this was the full hand:

After the first bid by West, the bids were all pretty much forced. I would not say that East could never pass 2 Diamonds with that hand, but I can say that I would never do it. And the final result was 500 for Singapore, when EW lost the obvious 6 tricks (2 hearts, 3 diamonds, 1 club), due to the spade blockage which prevented the King of spades from adding any trick to declarer’s total.
After an initial 3 Diamonds overcall, North would not have a natural penalty double.
Would South reopen? He should, but there is no doubt that it is easier for North to double 3 Diamonds than for South to do it.
Meanwhile, in the other room, the Singaporean pair nimbly avoided any trouble in the bidding with these cards:

There are lots of little things going on in hands like this that explain the big swing. In this auction, the first component is East’s light opening (in a Precision context), even vul vs. non-vul. Many people refrain from light openings because they are, allegedly, risky. But any coin has two sides: sometimes a light opening helps you avoid trouble.

This is not enough to explain EW’s escape, though: full marks must also be given to Jazlene Ong’s restraint with the West cards (and again, the light opening context of Precision helped a lot there). The “death holding” of xxx in the opponent’s suit, the blocking SA, the weak (even if very long) suit, were all warning signs that were duly noted. (I speak here as someone who would have a great deal of difficulty in finding this pass).

Curiously, though, the bidding success was followed by a trick lost in defense, enabling N-S to go plus in their 2H contract. The Ace of Spades was led, and West then shifted to a club; King of spades (club pitch), spade ruff, dA, and now, when West played a diamond, East did not really believe that his partner had passed with a 7-card suit headed by the AJ and a side Ace, and so ruffed small! Ida Grönkvist gratefully overruffed cheaply, drew trumps, and made 8 tricks.
​
But Singapore accepted the 9 IMPs (rather than the 11 they might have gotten if East had ruffed high). 

Sweden had a superb performance in the 2018 World Youth Teams Championships, winning
the Under-26 and Under-21 categories. In the U-26 (also known as the Juniors), the finals were
played against Singapore, a country which has been steadily placing higher at World
Championships in the past years.

Those who follow Junior bridge know that, at the highest levels, the game is extremely
aggressive and well played, and that the partnerships employ very sophisticated methods with
great competence. When the finals of the 2018 World Championship began, the first board
was an example of all that.

These were the cards – being Board 1, this was all white, and North was the dealer: