In today’s deal, South has too much to pass his partner’s rebid of two spades. But since no-trump could easily be the right final resting place, he explores first with three clubs, then cue-bids the opponent’s suit, suggesting half a heart stopper. North looks with favor on his good controls and drives to four spades.

Now the spotlight turns to East, who must abandon traditional thinking. When West leads the heart four, the partnership methods are to play third and lowest. What that means is that West leads low from an odd number, top of a doubleton, but third highest from a four- or six-card suit.

After winning two heart tricks, East can infer that because West led his lowest heart, he has precisely three cards in the suit. (This inference is one not always available when playing fourth-highest leads.) What should he do now?

East has two potential club tricks with which to defeat the game, but will not make both if South establishes dummy’s diamonds for club discards. If declarer has the diamond queen, the defenders are helpless. But East must hope that is not so. To forestall the chance that dummy’s third trump might constitute dummy’s late re-entry, he must force dummy to ruff the third heart.

Should declarer then play to establish diamonds via a third-round ruff, East must save his club ace to take down the king. He must not capture the queen if South leads it out of his hand to tempt him.

South’s balancing double of one spade followed by the two-heart call suggests a good hand, but not necessarily a great one. He rates to be in the 15-18 range with five or more hearts, so he certainly has enough in hand to accept North’s invitation to game.

When West starts with three rounds of spades against four hearts, South ruffs the third and must make a plan. Since East has produced the spade queen, declarer knows he is unlikely to have much else in the way of high cards.

Declarer’s task is to limit his minor-suit losses to one trick. If he could count on the diamond finesse to win, he could simply concede a club. But the diamond king is almost certainly in the West hand.

The better plan is therefore to try to develop two diamond tricks in dummy for the discard of South’s two low clubs. At trick four, South should lead the diamond three from hand. If West wins his king, declarer is almost home. He unblocks diamonds, then draws trumps ending in dummy to cash two more rounds of diamonds and pitch his clubs.

If West can steel himself to duck his diamond king, which would be the best defense today, declarer must still reckon with the possible two club losers. He should cash the club ace and king and lead a third round of clubs.

If the clubs break 3-3, declarer is home free. If the clubs split 4-2, declarer can arrange to ruff his fourth club high in dummy.

Over North’s quantitative sequence, South might accept the slam try by bidding six clubs (a 5-3 fit could easily be best here). However, when he bids six no-trump, he finds himself in an excellent spot; now all he has to do is make it.

After the lead of the spade jack, declarer counts two spades, three hearts and three diamond tricks, which adds up to eight tricks. The key to the deal therefore is that the he needs to take four club tricks, not five; declarer can afford to give up a trick in clubs as insurance to bring home his contract.

This is sometimes referred to as a safety play, though that term is rather misleading. A safety play should be a maneuver to avoid losing an unnecessary trick. Today’s deal is closer to a gambit, where a trick is potentially invested for the greater good of the contract.

In positions like this, if South had weaker club spots, the best play might be to cash the club ace. Here, though, declarer starts by leading a low club to the queen. If it loses, cash the club ace and finesse against East should West shows. This play loses only to a singleton king in East.

However, when the queen holds, do not cash the ace; that fails whenever West has K-10-fourth. Instead, come back to hand with the diamond ace and lead the club nine next, intending to run it if West follows with the six. Of course, if West discards on the second club, you rise with the ace, then finesse against East’s K-10.

At Yokohama last year, this deal pitted Jack Zhao of China against one of his former partners. Zhao, North, reached three no-trump after opening one heart then jumping to three clubs. You can hardly blame Fu Zhong for leading a diamond rather than a club, but that meant 12 tricks for Zhao — a near-top.

However, David Bakhshi and Kazuko Tsumori bid to six spades by North on the deal, and they also received a diamond lead. When Tsumori ran that to her hand, she had 12 tricks … and an even better score.

Six spades by South seems to have too much work to be done on a club lead, but an astute declarer can find his way home even then. Win the club ace, play a low heart to your ace, and trust the defenders’ count signal in hearts. Take just one top spade, then cash two top hearts, pitching clubs from hand. Now ruff a club, go back to the spade king and face the critical decision.

The fall of the spade honors makes it more likely that East holds the spade queen than that West began with precisely Q-J-10 of trumps. It would be right to cash hearts now if East began with a 3=4=4=2 pattern, but if you believe the carding, you should play East for only three hearts. The point is that if you play the fourth heart at once, East can ruff and exit in clubs; instead, ruff the third club and exit with a spade.

In the four-card ending, East must lead diamonds and allow your queen and ace to score.

This board from the quarterfinals of the World Championships in Lyon turned out to be a fine battle between declarer and the defense.

Against four spades, Jacek Pszczola (Pepsi) cashed two top diamonds and wisely did not play a third, as declarer Mikael Rimstedt would have set up his clubs. Instead, he switched to the spade 10. Rimstedt covered this with dummy’s jack, drawing the king and ace. West now held the sole guards in both spades and clubs.

Next, declarer played the king and queen of trump, ruffed his diamond loser with the heart ace and ran the remaining trumps. To retain his club honors, West had to reduce to just one spade. If he kept his spade nine, he would be thrown in with a spade to lead away from the club king. If he discarded his high spade, South’s spade eight would be good. Either way, declarer had his 10 tricks.

After two rounds of diamonds, West needed to switch specifically to the spade queen, so that East would be able to guard the suit with his king.

In the other room, Frederick Nystrom led the diamond ace and, realizing that he would have to open up spades sooner or later, found the necessary switch to a spade intermediate at trick two.

When declarer Joe Grue allowed this to win, West cashed the diamond queen, then played the spade six to the seven and ace. Declarer eventually had to surrender a club and a spade trick for one down, and Sweden had a well-earned game swing.

This was a deal from the quarter-finals at the world championships in Lyon last August. When South declared four spades, West generally led a top diamond.

The New Zealand West then played a second diamond, and the Dutch declarer ruffed and guessed to take the club finesse, a simple and seductive line. But when it lost, a heart back settled his hash immediately for down one.

By contrast, after the same first two tricks, the New Zealand declarer ruffed and led a low spade toward dummy at trick three. West correctly played low — which would have been necessary if his partner had the spade ace rather than the club king. The spade queen won, and declarer played a low spade back to his ace, dropping the king, then took the club finesse and was home against any defense.

A far tougher defense would have been for West to switch to a club at trick two. If declarer finesses, East wins and can switch to a heart. However, declarer can (in theory) riposte by going up with dummy’s club ace and then playing a spade to the ace and a spade.

At yet another table, the Bulgarian West cashed just one top diamond, then led a low heart away from his doubleton king! Declarer won the queen and led a low spade, West taking his king and continuing with a top diamond. Declarer ruffed, cashed dummy’s spade honors and now should have led a club to his 10. Instead, he played a heart to his jack and lost both a club and a heart trick.

As Micke Melander reported from the World Championships in Lyon last year, all too often a bridge player will wake up in a cold sweat, having realized how he had gone down in a contract he should have made. When Sweden played Brazil in the Seniors, Anders Morath confessed his sins to the bulletin.

As South, you are in four spades on the lead of the diamond jack. When you ruff the opening lead and play the spade king, everybody follows small. What next?

Morath inferred that East had all the top diamonds, so West had the major-suit aces. Since trumps appeared to be 3-1, Morath cashed the three top clubs, pitching a diamond, then played a second trump, hoping he could play hearts from his hand for two losers. That wasn’t the case today.

He later realized he should have pitched a heart rather a diamond on the third club. He would then have been able to lead a fourth club and ruff it high in hand. If West over-ruffs, he can do no better than play a diamond, letting declarer ruff and lose just two hearts. If West discards instead of over-ruffing, South simply ruffs a diamond in dummy to lose one trump and two hearts again.

Morath said that to make matters worse, West’s initial pass with both major-suit aces and the diamond jack meant that East was very likely to hold the heart queen, since East-West open most 11-counts. So an alternative route to success would have been to run the heart jack at trick five.

In this deal from the quarterfinal match between Bulgaria and USA1 in the Bermuda Bowl last summer, the U.S. team played game at both tables.

In the other room, against three no-trump by East, the opening lead was a low club. North won the ace and continued with the queen. East misjudged by overtaking with the king, which set up declarer’s nine for his ninth trick.

In the room shown here, East bailed out after a gambling three no-trump opener, over which Jeff Meckstroth as South found a courageous balance of four hearts, doubled by East.

On a diamond lead and a spade shift at trick two, this would have been at least one down. But when West continued with a top diamond, declarer stood a chance, even more so when East discarded a club on the diamond king.

Meckstroth ruffed, crossed to dummy’s club queen, led a heart to his jack, crossed to the club jack and led another heart. East went in with the ace this time and returned his last club, but Meckstroth could overtake his king with dummy’s ace, cash the club eight for a spade discard (ruffing it would not have helped the defense), ruff a diamond to reduce his trump length, and play ace and another spade. His king and 10 of hearts were now sure to score the last two tricks.

So USA1 collected game in both rooms for a 14-IMP swing — which somehow seems rather low when you consider that a normal game swing is worth at least 10 IMPs.

To describe something as “done like a computer” might be flattering in almost every area but in the world of bridge, where computers have yet to achieve top-class play. However, things are beginning to change, as Al Levy, coordinator of the Computer World Championships, demonstrated.

He reported this brilliant example from Round Six of the Lyon qualifying event last year. It was a fine example of good defense defeating accurate declarer play.

Against four hearts, West got off to an efficient start by going passive and leading a trump. Any other card, except the spade ace, would have let through the contract immediately. Declarer won and saw that he could no longer ruff a diamond in dummy. So he drew a second round of trumps, then led a small spade toward dummy’s king. West again made the right play of rising with the ace, as East signaled count, then continued accurately by shifting to a diamond to East’s queen. Declarer ducked this trick, and East now played a small diamond, (rather than the “routine” 10, which would have been fatal).

Declarer won his diamond ace and ran all his trumps. West had to find five discards, to reduce to three cards; he pitched two spades, a club and the diamond jack, then went into what for a computer was a long pause. For his final discard, he let go of the diamond king, thus avoiding the throw-in. East could now win South’s diamond exit and play a club, taking the contract down.