All of our deals have a common theme this week: how to play suit combinations that include the ace, king and jack.

This deal occurred in the final of a major national tournament, on Vugraph no less, so that declarer’s eventual embarrassment was evident to all when he missed the best play. Out of deference to the player (and perhaps partly out of concern about what might happen to my grandchildren if I mention his name) I shall preserve his anonymity.

North treated his hand as very strong and balanced, then tried to get out in diamonds, but South wasn’t in on the joke and eventually, much to his disgust, ended in a grand slam with only two trumps in hand.

Perhaps the auction influenced his line of play: He won the club lead in dummy, cashed the diamond ace, then came to hand in clubs to finesse the diamonds. The finesse won, but the 4-1 trump break was too much for him to cope with.

Of course, the percentage play with this trump suit is to take two finesses. Win the club lead and pass the diamond nine at once. When it holds, repeat the finesse and draw trumps, after which you have 13 tricks.

The reason this play is right is that if trumps are 4-1, with West having the length, it is four times as likely that the singleton is a small one rather than the queen. With any other lie of the diamonds, the question of whether you take the first- or second-round finesse is irrelevant.

All the deals this week have something in common. Each includes the theme that declarer has to tackle a suit in which he has the ace, king and jack. With holdings of this sort, there are multiple issues that might arise. You may need to keep one defender off lead (a concept generally summed up as “avoidance”). Alternatively, you may simply need to maximize your trick potential. Finally, as in today’s deal, you may be looking at a safety play, where you are prepared to invest a trick in order to ensure that you do not lose two.

When the opponents lead the diamond 10 against your club slam, you count three tricks in diamonds, bringing your total outside the trump suit to nine tricks. So you need only three club tricks to make your slam — in other words, the focus should be on avoiding two trump losers. (It’s true that if both clubs and spades fail to break, you might not have 12 top tricks, but a 4-1 trump break is far more likely than a combination of foul splits.)

The simplest route to making your slam is to win the diamond lead cheaply in hand and avoid the knee-jerk reaction of leading a club to the ace and a club back toward the king-jack. Instead, cash the club king and play toward the ace-nine, planning to put in the nine if West follows with a small card. If West plays the 10 or queen, you take the trick; but if he shows out, you win the ace and lead toward your jack. After that, it is smooth sailing.

Today’s deal is a real-life hand from 45 years ago, reported in the Australian press.

It represents a missed opportunity for declarer, who had been given a roadmap by East’s double (maybe Dick Cummings was assuming his partner, Tim Seres, had a hand with some defense, given his overcall rather than a preempt.)

The defense began with a top heart lead to the ace. Perhaps assuming that hearts could not be 7-1, declarer unblocked clubs and led a heart from the board. Cummings discarded a club on this trick, and from here on in, the contract could no longer be made.

Declarer should surely have played for the diamonds not to break, and after winning the club ace, he should have led the diamond queen from dummy.

Say East covers, which looks right for preserving the tenace over dummy. Then four more rounds of clubs, discarding spades from dummy, forces East to ruff and return a high diamond. Now Declarer wins in dummy and cross-ruffs the majors. Though East can score his high trump sooner or later, that is all he gets.

The play is far more interesting on a spade lead, when East wins and returns a heart. After heart ace, then club ace, then the diamond queen to the king and ace, South cashes the club king and queen, throwing hearts from dummy. Then he takes the spade king, leads a spade to the queen, and ruffs a spade. In the four-card ending, South ruffs a spade and leads a heart from the board; now East can score only one more trump trick.

Bridge history records all too many slam bids missing two aces, or two top tricks. Some of these contracts have come home, but surely one of the odder entries into the record books is today’s hand, from the 1997 Vanderbilt Trophy quarterfinals in Dallas.

West led the diamond ace in an attempt to force out declarer’s trumps, and declarer made the odd-looking play of discarding a spade from dummy. Meanwhile East played the diamond nine, a discouraging card that, according to the partnership methods, suggested to West that he should switch to a high suit rather than a low one. What was going on here? West could see no future in trying to cash the club ace, since it was surely never going to get away, so he led a spade, which seemed passive enough.

Declarer Paul Soloway won the king, drew four rounds of trumps and took the rest of the tricks with his seven-card spade suit and his diamond king, discarding all of dummy’s clubs in the process!

So what was going on? Soloway had thought his partner, Bobby Goldman, was showing the two lower unbid suits when he bid five no-trump. His hearts were better than his clubs, so he decided to bid hearts to protect his diamond king. Didn’t he play it well?

This turned out to be a flat board, since the opponents played in six spades in the other room, but Soloway’s squad was clearly the team of destiny, since they squeaked through in this match by 1 IMP and went on to win the trophy after that.

This deal arose in the North American trials of 1999, where the next Hall of Fame inductee Michael Seamon was playing with Jimmy Cayne. It was a valiant effort in a losing cause. Against four spades doubled, West led the club ace, producing the three from dummy and the 10 from East.

As West’s jump overcall was expected to be a six-card suit, declarer suspected that East’s double was partly made on the basis of holding a singleton club; so, in tempo, declarer Seamon contributed the king!

West wasn’t quite sure whom to believe, but eventually came down on the side of declarer (a variation on “Who are you going to believe — me, or the evidence before your own eyes?”). He made the unsuccessful switch to a low diamond. Note that if he had led a heart instead, East might have found the return of a low diamond and then still received his club ruff. As it was, though, East rose with the diamond ace, cashed his other red ace, then returned a second diamond.

Granted a second reprieve, Seamon ruffed in hand, then discarded a club on the heart king and ruffed a heart in dummy. When he ruffed a diamond in hand, it brought down West’s king, and a second heart ruff produced the queen from East.

The 4-0 trump break could now be handled in style: The diamond jack let South discard his second club, and he could then take the last three tricks on a high crossruff, with East forced to underruff throughout.

When West led the diamond queen against six spades, declarer paused to form a plan, even though his play to the first trick was nearly automatic. He could count to 11 tricks if trumps divided, so he needed a 12th.

One possibility was to try to set up a long diamond in dummy, but that would almost certainly require both trumps and diamonds to behave. Declarer decided that a better shot was to ruff a heart high in dummy and finesse the trump nine after having done so. (This line does offer a better chance of making the contract than trying to set up diamonds.)

So at trick two, declarer led a low trump; but when West discarded a heart, declarer had to reconsider his options. Winning the trick with dummy’s trump queen, declarer then played a heart to the ace and cashed three rounds of clubs. After discarding a heart on the diamond ace, declarer ruffed a diamond low, then exited with a heart. West won the trick with the heart eight and exited with a low heart. As planned, declarer ruffed this with dummy’s trump king.

In the three-card ending, declarer had the trump ace-jacknine remaining, and any lead from dummy would ensure he could score all of the remaining tricks. Declarer made five trumps, the heart ace, a heart ruff, two diamonds and three clubs, for a total of 12 tricks.

It was critical here to cash the clubs and take the diamond ruff before East could discard from the minors on the hearts.

The odds associated with a finesse are traditionally 50-50, but sometimes you can achieve a 100% result by finessing into the safe hand — and sometimes you can achieve an equally good result by rejecting the finesse altogether.

Consider today’s deal, in which you reach what appears to be the normal contract of four spades, on a passive club lead from West.

To digress for a moment: I would certainly lead a red-suit against that contract myself, since it is far more likely that you need to set up winners than go passive here, but that is another column. Similarly, the question of whether to lead second-highest from four small here would produce different opinions from different players.

You win the club ace and hasten to draw trumps; what next? You should cash the club king and ruff a club to eliminate that suit altogether. Now you must play the diamond ace followed by the diamond queen. Yes, you give up on the finesse, but you have ensured your contract in the process. Whoever wins the diamond king must give you a trick in return, either via a ruff-sluff or by broaching hearts for you, to ensure that you lose no more than two tricks in the suit.

Note that if you take the diamond finesse, you risk going down. When it loses, back comes a diamond, and you will find you still have to lose three hearts.

The technique here, of eliminating the side suits and forcing a favorable return, is one worth adding to your repertoire.

Today’s deal comes from the 1989 European Championship and was declared by Tony Forrester, who played in four hearts on the spade 10 lead. Forrester has been ever present on the Great Britain and now England teams over the last 35 years. He is well known as being both a tough opponent to play against because of his imaginative and aggressive bidding, and also for being an excellent technician.

The contract of four hearts seemed reasonable, but when the spade 10 was led, the risk of a ruff on defense suddenly became a serious one.

If declarer were to win the opening lead and try to draw trumps, the defense would score their ruff, play off their top trumps, then exit in clubs. They would eventually collect a diamond winner.

Forrester had other ideas; he won the opening lead, played the club ace and king, then ruffed a club in hand before playing the heart jack. East won the heart ace and returned a spade. The good news was that his partner could ruff and cash the heart king, but after that, he was endplayed. With only minor-suit cards left, he could exit in diamonds into the tenace or play a club, at which point declarer would pitch dummy’s diamond loser(s) and take the rest via his top spades, the diamond ace, and the three trumps.

This deal emphasizes how often, when you need cooperation from your opponents, eliminating the side suits early can put additional pressure on the defenders, sometimes in unexpected ways.