How to approach a Bridge hand as declarer?

There are some hints which I found helpful.

• Scan through all suits first, adding the number of cards you have in combined hands, computing the number of cards the opponents hold and the possible or likely distributions. You can take into account what you know from the bidding or the lead. This helps to know what's going on later in the game by anchoring details in your memory.
• After you have done this, count your tricks and also your losers. If that does not add up to 13, find out why. In some hands, counting the losers is good enough because you have more winners than you need. In this case, see how to avoid some of the losers. In other hands, the winners are more important, because you lose tricks that you cannot predict after giving control to the opponents.
• Then plan your play as good as you can at this moment. It is, of course, best to plan for all eventual distributions, but often too difficult. Experience will teach you to simplify the plan as much as possible. I cannot delve into the problems that you might face any deeper here. Bridge is not an easy game.
• Then, see what can go wrong with your plan. Did you assume a replay that might not happen? Did you forget to score extra tricks by ruffing? Other problems?

The following hand serves as a demonstration.

After that involved bidding, you reach a slam in diamonds. You see the lead of a small heart. Now check your suits first.

• You have 5 spades with three top winners. The opponents are likely to have 5:3 or 4:4. Of course, 6:2 is also possible, but more rare.
• You have 6 hearts with 2 top winners. Opponents are likely 4:4 or 5:2.
• You have only an 8-card fit in your trump suit. Most likely, you get 4 tricks there. If the finesse works, you get 5. Opponents are likely 3:2 or more rarely 4:1. Mentally note that there is a finesse which could cause one loser.
• You have 7 clubs with 3 sure winners, even if the finesse fails. Mentally note again, that the finesse could cause one loser.

If you add everything up, you have 3+2+4+3=12 sure tricks. But you need to do two finesses and that might cause two losers. The chances for both finesses to fail is only 1/4, however. That does not mean that you get an extra winner. You still have a loser if one finesse fails, and your winners fall together.

Now, let us plane the game. It sounds easy. We take the lead in North and make the trump finesse. if it fails, we take the finesse in clubs. But, wait! We have no entry to the table to do that. That also prevents us from cashing ♠AKQ. We need to rethink our plan and find one that works.

It is more helpful to think of losers here. You have two small diamonds and two small clubs. You can discard three of them on your spades. Now, you get the idea to trump another one at the table. You find out that you can do all of that after a little bit of pondering. Take the lead at the table, discard two clubs and one heart right away on your top spades, and make the trump finesse now. If it holds, you can cash another trump for more safety, play the ♥K, and ruff a heart at the table with the remaining trump. In this hand East can overruff. But that does not matter. The rest is yours.

What can go wrong? The spades might distribute 6:2. There is no cure against that, you find. You might be able to overruff if the double is at East. But at that point, you have no entry to the table. The trumps might be 4:1 with West. Then you lose two trump tricks no matter what you do.

My main point of all this is, that things are much easier if you first scan the hand, the winners and the losers. Then make a plan. It is much easier to stay connected to the table if you already anchored the possible distributions in your brain.

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