Today's deal shows two expert players handling a delicate grand slam from the Open Teams at Ostend last summer. In the auction shown, South (Per-Erik Austberg) knew his side had all the keycards after the five-no-trump bid, and his solid clubs looked like enough for him to accept the invitation.

Austberg won the heart lead and took two top trumps to test the suit, then cashed the club ace and ruffed a club. Now he ruffed a heart to reach hand to draw the last trump. On this, dummy discarded a diamond, but what should East throw? At the table he chose to discard a heart. Austberg crossed to the diamond ace and ruffed another heart. That left only West guarding the hearts, so when declarer took his two winning clubs, West was squeezed in the red suits.

Declarer had done the best he could, but was there a better defense against the grand? When Petter Tondel declared seven spades, Agnes Snellers as East pitched a small diamond on the third spade. Tondel now carefully played the diamond jack to the ace, felling East’s queen, ruffed a heart, then cashed the two remaining top clubs. East followed suit, but West had to throw a heart and a diamond. Correctly reading East as having the winning heart and club left, declarer triumphantly finessed the diamond eight at trick 12 to make his grand slam.

If declarer does not unblock his diamond jack early, he no longer has the option to finesse in diamonds.

This deal was played in the Pairs Championships at Ostend last summer. The deal does not exemplify any great technical theme, but it was so much fun for the defenders that I thought it worthwhile to show my readers.

If you focus solely on the North and South cards, you would expect North to open a strong no-trump and be transferred into two spades. You’d expect declarer to bring home his contract unless trumps were hostile. In fact, the spades are quite friendly, but things did not work out as expected.

Where Waseem Naqvi and Lee Rosenthal were defending, they pushed their opponents to the three-level, then showed how to maximize their trump holdings.

Rosenthal, West, started with the diamond ace, continuing with a diamond to Naqvi’s jack. Naqvi switched to his singleton club, then took a club ruff to play back a diamond. Declarer ruffed optimistically with the spade eight, overruffed by Rosenthal with the nine. A third round of clubs was ruffed with the spade king and overruffed by East with the ace.

Now Naqvi played another diamond, and declarer had to decide if the remaining spades were as in the diagram or the other way around. When he guessed wrong by ruffing with the spade 10, it was overruffed by the jack. Now a fourth round of clubs promoted Naqvi’s spade seven. The defense was finally out of ammunition, but they had made all five of their trumps for four down, and virtually all the matchpoints.

Even the experts sometimes lose their way. In today's deal declarer had two chances to make a doubled partscore, but missed both.

In one room West had made eight tricks in clubs, but in the other room South was playing for bigger stakes. Against two hearts doubled, Ricco van Prooijen led his singleton heart to the three, two and king. Now declarer misguessed by playing a spade to dummy’s jack at trick two. East, Marion Michielsen, took the spade queen and played the diamond five. Declarer went up with the ace and cashed three more spades, fatally discarding one of dummy’s clubs instead of the lone diamond. Michielsen ruffed the 13th spade and continued with the diamond queen, then switched to clubs. Van Prooijen could win the second club and play a killing third round of diamonds. Declarer ruffed this diamond low, but Michielsen overruffed and still had a trump trick. The defenders took one trick in each side-suit, plus three trump tricks.

If declarer discards dummy’s diamond on the fourth spade, Michielsen could ruff the fourth spade and play her diamond, but dummy then ruffs and plays a club. East can duck to allow West to win, but declarer discards dummy’s remaining club on the diamond continuation. A further diamond can then be ruffed with the heart jack. If East overruffs, that is the last trick for the defense. If she discards her last nontrump, declarer leads a low heart from dummy, endplaying East in trumps.

Today's deal shows one of the world's best technicians at work on a grand slam. Geir Helgemo sat South, and when he heard about his partner's two aces, he immediately jumped to seven no-trump. This was for him the last board of an eventually unsuccessful attempt to qualify for the mixed pairs final at Ostend last summer.

West led the diamond 10 to dummy’s ace, and at this point, Helgemo could see 12 top tricks. The working spade finesse might bring in the 13th trick in a pedestrian way but, of course, the first thing Helgemo did was to have a look at possible squeezes. So he went on to cash the other two top diamonds, discarding two more spades and getting the interesting news that East could not follow to the third diamond.

Helgemo followed up by taking his six heart winners, reducing to a five-card ending where East kept three clubs and two spades while West had one diamond, one spade and three clubs.

On the last heart West has to discard a club, to keep his singleton spade honor, while East has to throw a spade to keep clubs guarded. So no matter which opponent has the spade king, declarer should make the hand by leading a spade to the ace. That line would fail only if West has stayed silent with 7-5 distribution.

Note that in seven hearts, an initial club lead destroys the entry position, as declarer cannot cash the three top diamonds safely.

Sometimes the best stories have a sting in the tail. England international Barry Myers reported this deal, in which he had simultaneously played the hero and the goat.

Myers had experimented at his third turn with two hearts, meaning it as a lead-directing’ club raise; but he found his partner could not take a joke. Against three hearts the defenders led a top spade and shifted to trumps. Myers won the queen in hand and knocked out the club ace. The defenders forced dummy with a second spade, and Myers led the club king, ruffed by West, giving declarer the blueprint to the whole deal. The next spade was ruffed in dummy, and now it was up to declarer to find the legitimate route to bring home six of the seven last tricks.

The winning line is to play ace, king and a third diamond, ruffing with the heart jack, as Myers did. Now you play ace and a second trump, endplaying East with his heart eight to lead clubs into dummy’s tenace. If East ruffs in on an earlier diamond, you can instead overruff and draw trump, then concede a spade.

Very nice — so where’s the catch? As Myers discovered later on, on the third round of spades West had led his jack (squashing his partner’s 10), rather than a low spade. Accordingly, Myers’ remaining spades were now high, and he could simply have ruffed a diamond to hand and drawn trump. His hand would then have been high, and he would have had an overtrick.

Aces are made to take kings, they say. Up to a point, but there are always exceptions, as this deal from last year's European Open Championships in Ostend demonstrates. In fact, all the deals this week come from that event, marking the fact that the European championships are starting now.

In the auction South’s one-club opening was Polish, showing either a minimum balanced hand or 18-20 high-card points, and the two-no-trump rebid showed a balanced hand with extra values — but not necessarily any real club length.

Against three no-trump, West (Sue Picus) started with the spade queen, taken by declarer’s ace. She played four rounds of diamonds, and when Alex Kolesnik got in with the diamond jack, he put the heart king on the table. Had declarer ducked, she would have remained in control. But when declarer won the heart ace, the only way for her to get to the good diamond in dummy was to play a heart. Now Kolesnik was poised with the club ace and good hearts to cash, so declarer ended up a trick short.

Had declarer ducked the first heart, she could have won the heart continuation in dummy, cashed her diamond, and led a club toward her king to score her ninth trick sooner or later.

Conceding nine tricks in three no-trump would have represented an average result for East-West, but defeating the game was a near top.

One of the world's greatest players never to win a world title was Jean Besse of Switzerland. Whether as a player, an analyst, or a commentator, Besse was a master of his profession.

Today’s deal was deemed interesting (by him); an indication of its difficulty and elegance. Besse was sitting in the South seat.

Declaring six spades, Besse won the club lead in dummy, led a spade to the ace, and a spade to the nine. The good news was that he had no trump loser, the bad that he could not ruff a heart in dummy without giving up on the trump finesse.

When the diamond king and queen revealed the bad news there, he led a club to the ace, on which West had to throw a heart. Next came the top hearts and a heart ruff in dummy. The diamond ace then reduced everyone down to three cards.

South and West each had two trumps and a diamond, West having the master diamond, while dummy had a spade, a diamond and a losing club.

Now, with the lead in dummy came the coup de grace; Besse led the club six, and discarded his diamond loser, as did West. East could now take his pick between a heart and club lead; either way, declarer would ruff in with the spade eight, and West’s sure spade trick was smothered. Whether he underruffed or overruffed, he could no longer score a trump trick.

When you feel confident that your side has a game on, but the opponents bid on to sacrifice in a suit that outranks yours, you have to resist the temptation to go chasing rainbows. If the best you can do is defeat their game, then make sure you go plus, rather than ruing what might have been.

In today’s deal West led the heart five against four spades doubled, and on winning with the ace, East returned a trump. He had failed to take into account the threat posed by dummy’s clubs. Even if South did not have the club queen, declarer would surely discard his losing diamonds on clubs if given the opportunity.

The only chance for the defense appears to be to establish two diamond winners before East’s club ace is knocked out. For that to work, West must hold the diamond jack. So, a low diamond at trick two may be desperate, but it looks to be the only chance, and when West turns up with the jack, the game fails.

The blame was not all East’s, though. West knew there was at most one heart trick coming for the defense. Since he had no re-entry, why not lead the heart king, taking a peek at dummy to gauge where next to attack? Had he done so, East would have followed with the heart queen, suit preference for the higher-ranked minor, and the deal would have been over.

When this four-spade deal came up at the Dyspeptics Club, all four players joined in a post-mortem that was (as usual) distinguished by considerably more heat than light.

After winning the heart opening lead, East had shifted to a low club at trick two. Declarer drew trumps and gave up a diamond, after which the defenders took one heart but then played a second club, allowing declarer to make his game.

North accused South of being an idiot. South told North that East should have found the fatal shift to a trump at trick two. Meanwhile, East was trying to explain to West why he could never have worked out that South would play this way when holding three losing hearts. West said East knew South well enough never to make such an assumption. Who was right? Can declarer make his game against best defense?

As to whether East could ever have worked out how to defend, the answer might have been easier for him if West were playing ‘third-and-lowest’ leads. Even then, the heart three might have been from 9-6-3-2 if South concealed the two. Still, West’s signal on the first club should have made it clear to East who had the club king.

But to sum up: Best defense after the heart lead is a trump shift. Declarer wins with the spade ace and ducks a diamond. Now, as long as diamonds are 3-2 and spades no worse than 4-2, declarer cannot be defeated.