After North’s Drury two club response to show a maximum pass with fit, South checked for key cards, then bid the spade slam.

West’s lead of the diamond 10 went to dummy’s ace. Declarer needed to hold his losers in the black suits to one, but had to decide which black suit to play first. In these positions, it is sometimes right to go after the side suit first, but here South advanced the trump jack and let it run when East played low. West’s discard of a low heart gave declarer pause. Can you see a good plan for him now?

Declarer’s solution was to throw a club on the diamond ace, then to lead out dummy’s trump 10, covered by the king and ace. Next, he put the club jack on the table — a move that would guarantee the contract as long as East had at least two clubs.

As the cards lay, the defense had no answer to this line of play. If West took the trick with the club queen, declarer would use dummy’s club 10 as an entry to pick up East’s remaining trumps. He would end up with six trumps, a heart, two diamonds and three clubs.

At the table, West allowed the club jack to hold the trick. Declarer continued by cashing the club ace, then ruffing the club eight in dummy. East overruffed this with the seven, but that was the only trick the defense made. Declarer ruffed the return of the diamond queen and drew East’s remaining trump with the ace, after which his hand was high.

When an opponent is faced with a blind opening lead, do you think it more likely that he has underled a king or a jack? Sometimes the fate of a contract will hinge on such a guess, but often declarer can survive guessing wrong — if he is careful.

Take today’s deal, where you drive to four spades on an uninformative sequence and receive the lead of a low heart. Your immediate reaction might be that if West has underled the king, you must fly up with the queen; while if he has underled the jack, you should play low. Is that addressing the problem correctly?

No, it is not, and the reason is that declarer’s heart 10 plays a huge role in the deal. Without that card, you would indeed put up dummy’s queen, but not today. Imagine that you play low from dummy and guess the position incorrectly. East’s jack forces your ace, but all is not lost if you win the lead and return the suit. West will win with his king and can shift to diamonds, but you have time to put up the king and lose the spade finesse to West. You will win the diamond return, shake a losing diamond from dummy on the heart 10, then ruff a diamond in dummy and draw trumps for your 10 tricks.

If the opposing heart honors were switched and you put up the queen, you would lose the chance to build a home for your slow diamond loser on the hearts.

Incidentally, if the first trump finesse succeeds, make sure not to repeat it until you have taken your diamond ruff in dummy.

Our final example in the theme of negotiating a suit missing the queen and jack will happen to you only once in a lifetime; be ready for it, please!

In the finals of the World Championships in Beijing in 1995, neither the men nor women managed to stop low — indeed, three pairs bid the hands to game, and no one made much of an attempt to make it. Strangely enough, when South declares the hand on a diamond lead, the contract is unbreakable. Of course, South can play for a mundane doubleton queen-jack of trumps, but that will never get you in the papers, will it?

In four hearts, there is no need to rush things; the timing is a little awkward, but it is simplest to finesse the diamond jack at trick one, then play a club. East must take his ace, and a diamond return is as good as any. South wins the ace, plays a spade to the king, then leads the diamond king for a spade discard; now the carding makes it safe to ruff a diamond. Next cash the club king, pitching a spade, ruff a club and exit with a spade from dummy. In the five-card ending, either defender can take this trick, but it is best for West to overtake East’s queen with the ace and cash his side’s second spade trick.

However, declarer is now left with A-9-4 in trumps facing K-10-6, and the defense’s trump trick is about to vanish. When West leads a club, you ruff low in dummy, and whether East ruffs in with the eight or queen, you are home free. A perfect Devil’s coup.

The maneuver shown in today’s deal, known as an intrafinesse, does not come up all that often. It is an episode in this week’s theme of how to develop an extra trick in a suit missing the queen and jack.

Here, South declared three no-trump after opening a short club. West overcalled a natural two clubs over this, and when North produced a negative double, South introduced his four-card major, then owned up to a club stopper when North asked him for one.

After West kicked off with a low club, declarer won with dummy’s 10. He could see his way to something like two clubs, two spades and four heart tricks, but where was the ninth going to come from?

If he tried to set up a diamond, the defenders would surely win the race to establish clubs first. So the extra trick had to come from spades. In order to achieve his target, South crossed to his heart 10 and led a spade to the eight and 10. East shifted to diamonds, and West could see that declarer would likely establish his ninth winner in that suit if left to his own devices. So he played the ace of clubs, then the queen, as East pitched hearts. That let South score his king, but it set up West’s clubs in the process.

However, now declarer cashed the hearts, then took the spade king to drop West’s jack and led dummy’s last spade to his nine. The finesse wasn’t guaranteed to succeed, but declarer was confident that West would have split his honors at trick three if he had begun with Q-J-x of spades.

This deal is part of our weekly overview of a general theme: handling a suit where we are missing the queen and jack. When the auction has marked one defender as more likely than his partner to hold length in a suit, we have safety plays to guard against the bad split. Today’s deal is a horse of a slightly different color.

When West pre-empted to two spades, South doubled, to which his partner responded three clubs to show constructive values. With less, he would have used the Lebensohl convention, bidding two no-trump as an artificial negative.

In four hearts, South ducked the spade lead, won the second round and noted that the only real danger was a hostile trump break. He could not guard against most breaks where West was short, but he had a play that was technically sound and also gave the defenders a chance to err. After taking the spade ace, he led the heart nine from dummy, a play that would pin a bare eight in West and would also allow East to fall from grace with a knee-jerk cover. East did precisely that by putting in the 10, and South won, collecting West’s queen in the process.

Declarer now led a diamond to the king and played a second trump, ducking East’s eight. East returned a diamond; declarer won his ace, crossed to the club ace and took the trump finesse, then drew the last trump. Then he played the club king and another club, conceding a club trick, after which his hand was high.

Our themed deals this week all feature tackling suits where we are missing both the queen and the jack. Often the subsidiary cards influence our line of attack, and today’s deal is no exception.

Bringing home three no-trump after the lead of an interior club won’t be easy; we need to overcome not one but two hurdles. The first essential move is to duck the initial club lead. There is no shift we are particularly afraid of, but if clubs are 5-2 (as they are here), we may find we need to cut the defenders’ communications with a duck on the first round.

Winning the club continuation in hand, we then need to consider which major suit to go after, and the decision is pretty close. In favor of playing on hearts is the presence of better intermediates. But (and it is a big but) we need to exploit those intermediates to the fullest by leading to the heart nine. This succeeds not only against any 3-3 break, but also whenever West has both heart honors, and critically when he has a doubleton heart honor.

Today, east will win his heart honor, but has no third club to lead. The best he can do is shift to a high diamond spot, to the 10 and ace. In due course, we can unblock hearts, come back to hand in spades, and run the hearts. That brings us to four hearts, one diamond and two tricks in each of the black suits, nine in all.

Notice that playing the king of hearts, then the nine, will see us lose two heart tricks.

Today’s deal is part of a weekly series where we look at variations in the play and tackle suit combinations that exhibit a broadly similar theme.

This week, all the critical suits are missing the queen and jack. Here, a simple Stayman sequence saw South reach three no-trump after showing hearts, while dummy had implied spade length. West was happy enough with his heart sequence to lead it, and declarer won the first trick for fear of a club shift, then saw that he could probably make his contract if he could establish either an extra trick from spades or diamonds.

It seemed like the diamonds could wait; so declarer immediately went after spades, running the eight from hand around to East, who continued with hearts. Declarer ducked, won the next heart, then played the ace, king and a third diamond to East. That player could cash his last diamond winner and exit in clubs, but South took his last chance when he led a spade to the 10 and cashed out that suit for nine tricks.

Notice that declarer led the spade eight rather than the nine from hand because he did not want West to cover — as a general rule, leading the lower of touching cards toward dummy is more likely to get a defender to duck.

Also, it is worth noting that West did have a chance to set the game. If he had covered the first spade, declarer would have been held to two tricks in that suit, so long as the defenders played accurately thereafter.

I have been experimenting this year with a new category of themed deals. Every month I will run one week’s worth of deals with a common theme, generally during the play. This week’s deals all feature a problem for declarer or defense where the critical suit is missing both the queen and the jack.

Today’s deal is one fairly typical example of a sub-genre of the theme. Both North and South had a series of delicate decisions: South’s re-opening double looked clear, then North took an aggressive position, after which South was very close to driving to slam. Eventually he decided to respect his partner’s signoff. But make up your own mind how you would play five diamonds on a top club lead from West.

After that lead, South had a classic opportunity to take out insurance. In six diamonds, declarer would surely have played for either hearts or diamonds to break; but in five, he could virtually ensure his contract with a simple example of a safety play. By winning the club ace and leading a low diamond to East’s five and his own six, he could guarantee losing no more than one diamond and one spade. If West could win the first diamond, then declarer could guarantee being able to draw trumps and ruff the fourth heart safely in dummy, losing just one further trick in spades.

Admittedly, the lie of the cards was remarkably hostile, but not altogether unexpected given the initial pre-empt by West. And if you can guard against bad breaks, why not do so?