At the 1998 Cap Gemini World Pairs Invitational, we saw a relative rarity when Paul Chemla of France made an error in declarer play. His dissatisfaction with a bad guess on a high card must have been doubled upon discovering that he did not require the guess at all!

While three no-trump may be the best spot for North-South, the contract of four hearts on the lead of a top spade looked perfectly reasonable. After some thought, West shifted to the diamond six, middle of three cards, and East defended well by putting in the nine.

Declarer won in hand and crossed to the heart king, then continued with the heart nine. East continued his accurate defense when he covered, to deprive declarer of an entry to dummy. Now Chemla could draw all the trumps, but in the process, he made the mistake of pitching all of dummy’s spades. Now a diamond to the jack, ducked, left him needing to find the club jack in the endgame. Since West clearly had the length, and from the auction East had the club ace, Chemla got it wrong by playing West for the club jack.

A better line would have been to leave one spade in dummy while drawing trumps, reducing to one spade, three diamonds and two clubs. Now when you lead a diamond to dummy after drawing trumps, East must duck it as before. But now you ruff dummy’s spade back to hand and lead a third round of diamonds. East takes it, but is endplayed to lead clubs away from his ace in the three-card ending.

When Jens Auken wrote about the “kill-point,” he was suggesting that it is dangerous ever to relax at the table. If you do, you might miss that the critical point of a deal has been reached.

When the following hand arose, players sitting West were weighed in the balance, and most were found wanting. It looked normal for East to pre-empt to two spades, over which South could take the two-way shot to jump to five clubs. Since East’s opening call had virtually denied two aces, West typically doubled rather than bidding five spades, then led the spade king. When the king held, West had to plan the defense at trick two. I invite you to do likewise before reading on!

Doesn’t it seem natural to shift to a top heart? If you do, declarer ruffs in hand and lays down the club ace, then ruffs a spade, ruffs a heart, and goes to dummy with the club 10. Now the heart ace, followed by a heart ruff, eliminates all the major suits from his hand and dummy. The diamond ace and a second diamond leaves West hopelessly endplayed, forced to concede a ruff-and-discard, on which declarer’s last diamond loser is discarded.

If West does not lead or shift to a heart, declarer cannot eliminate the major suits — the trump entries to dummy are insufficient. But at only one of the eight tables did a defender spot the trap. When Michel Perron of France saw Paul Chemla contribute the spade nine at the first trick, showing an even number, he carefully continued with a spade to defeat the contract.

West ups the ante when East pre-empts to three hearts over North’s opening bid. Note that it is only the diamond ruff that beats four hearts.

Of course, North should refuse to sell out at his second turn. His double is takeout, though South can pass with trump tricks or length. Today his four-spade call gets him to a sensible spot — that is, until the trump break comes to light.

South ruffs the second-round heart in dummy and comes to hand with a diamond to try the trump finesse. The finesse succeeds, but when he discovers West has all five of the missing trumps, South must take desperate measures to keep control of the hand.

When he switches his attention to clubs, West ruffs the second round. Now a spade would let declarer draw two more rounds of trumps, then run the clubs, and West would simply score his long trump.

Therefore West accurately returns a heart, hoping to shorten South’s trumps and regain control of the hand. South ruffs in hand, discarding a club from dummy. He now cashes the high diamond, ruffs dummy’s third diamond in hand and leads another club in a four-card ending where dummy has two cards in each black suit, while declarer retains one trump and three clubs.

West must ruff, and now if he leads a trump, South will finesse and claim the rest. So West plays a diamond, letting South ruff in hand and pitch dummy’s last club. He now has a trump coup to score dummy’s two trumps.

Wang Wenfei is a world champion who is generally regarded as one of the best players in the world. In last year’s Hua Yuan Cup (an annual women’s event held in China), in the match between China and France, she and her partner Shen Qi showed excellent judgment and aggression in the bidding and then had to back it up in the play.

On the last board of the session, Wang became the declarer in five hearts doubled after a highly competitive auction. As you can see, four spades is a perfectly sensible contract, though one defeated on the defensive ruffs. But more than half the field was in five hearts doubled, and everyone but Wang went down, from one to four tricks!

The spade king was led to trick one. Declarer took her ace and ducked a diamond. West took the king to play back a spade, and declarer ruffed the spade return in dummy to run the diamond jack, discarding a club. After winning West’s club return, she played the heart queen to pin the jack; when West ducked, declarer drew the trumps in three rounds and ruffed out the diamond queen, for plus 650.

The defense could have done better if West had covered the heart queen; now she must score the heart nine one way or another. Conversely, declarer could have ruffed the second diamond instead of discarding. Now she would be able to lead the heart queen from her hand and lose just one more trick, no matter what West did.

The Dyspeptics Club players are all getting older, but apparently no wiser. However, South’s cards actually seem to be improving — which East described as being equivalent to the likelihood of a 100-year storm striking the bridge club every day. He also said that the only thing that was keeping him from bankruptcy or suicide was the knowledge that South would turn his gems into dross.

Today’s deal was just such an example when South picked up a hand that even he might have admitted was a trifle better than his usual. He reached six hearts on a typically unsubtle auction — though admittedly, it is not easy to bid the hand intelligently. He won the diamond opening lead and laid down the heart king, prepared to claim his contract, then sat back in his chair when the 4-0 trump break came to light.

Eventually, he coughed up the spade ace and continued with the jack, planning to pitch his club loser on the spade queen. Alas for his side, his plan was good but not foolproof. When West won his spade king and continued the suit, East ruffed in, and South was left with a club loser.

Cutting short South’s expostulations that he had genuinely been unlucky, North commented that chance favors the prepared mind. What did he mean?

Had South led the spade jack at trick three, he would have retained control of the spades. He could win the return and unblock spades, then draw trumps, finishing in North to take his discard in peace and quiet.

Most truisms possess a kernel of truth, but one would be unwise to put too much trust in them. That is certainly the case with the advice: “Eight ever, nine never.”

With eight cards between the two hands when you are missing the queen, it might usually be right to take the finesse; but not always. Similarly, with nine cards, you will, in abstract, play for the queen to drop. But circumstances alter cases — another cliché — as in today’s deal.

After North had made an intelligent raise of spades at his second turn, West led three rounds of diamonds against four spades. South ruffed away the queen, cashed the spade ace, then led a spade to the king, East showing out. Declarer now took his slight extra chance in hearts by cashing the ace to protect against the queen being singleton offside, but then could do no better than finesse the heart jack for down one.

That was admittedly slightly unlucky; however, South had missed out on a chance to break the rules. After ruffing the third round of diamonds, cashing the spade ace was fine. But declarer should next lead a heart to dummy, followed by both top clubs, ending in hand. Only now should South play a second round of trump.

If West plays low, declarer should insert the 10. If this loses to the doubleton queen in East, that player will be forced to lead a heart into dummy’s tenace, or give a ruff-sluff with a club. That would be trumped in dummy while South’s losing heart could be discarded.

In this three no-trump contract, it might seem that declarer will likely come to either eight or 10 tricks, depending on how the clubs behave, since the defenders will be able to set up and cash spades if they can get in twice more.

After winning the first or second spade, leading a club to the king will need that suit to break 3-3, which happens only slightly more than a third of the time. Better odds are to lead to the nine — that succeeds whenever West has the club 10.

But here, South knows from the bidding that East has all the missing honors, and he can exploit this fact to give East an insoluble problem. After winning the spade lead in hand, he leads a low diamond to dummy’s jack and advances the club nine.

If East rises with the ace (probably his best move in abstract), he establishes the clubs for declarer, as long as the latter holds the queen-jack. Even if South has only four clubs, three club tricks would see South home. Conversely, if East covers the nine with the 10, then South’s queen wins. Now declarer abandons clubs and knocks out the heart ace as his route to nine tricks.

The Morton’s Fork position is named after King Henry VII’s Lord Chancellor, John Morton. His novel approach to fundraising was based on the hospitality his potential victims offered him. Should the fare be uninspiring, his host must have salted some money away and must therefore be able to spare some for the king. If his host was generous, he clearly must be wealthy enough to pay his taxes.

Today’s deal came up in a recent Common Game duplicate, and while I don’t like South’s concealing his spades, the par contract was reached anyway.

As West, with a blind opening lead, I selected the club eight. Declarer won with dummy’s king and led a spade to the jack and king. Had the jack held, would leading a spade back to the nine have been the right way to go? I’m not sure, but in any event, after winning the spade king, I played a second club. South now cashed the diamond ace-queen, then took the two top spades. I discarded a heart, and declarer cashed all the winners, pitching his spade on the 13th diamond, then guessed the heart queen wrong for down one.

While alternative plays in spades would have generated three tricks, declarer’s line in that suit was perfectly reasonable. It certainly feels right to unblock the spade queen and diamond ace-queen in case the diamond jack or spade 10 falls doubleton, then to cash the remaining spade honor and run diamonds.

But as the last diamond is cashed, East is known to have started with no more than three hearts, West at least four. On purely mathematical grounds, declarer should play West for the heart queen; but there is more to it than that. Consider West’s blind Opening Lead: If West had the heart queen, he would always lead a club. But if he had four or more small hearts, might he not have led a heart instead of a club? So it is even more likely that he has the heart queen.