It is easy to get carried away with hands like North’s, especially when your take-out double unearths a heart fit. But partner could have bid more than two hearts and did not do so. Even inviting game is not without risk, but when North makes a try, South is more than happy to advance.

Game is nothing special, since the chance of losing three clubs on the go is far from negligible. Also, you appear to have a spade and likely diamond loser to deal with. However, when the club king is led, followed by a trump shift, you can win with the ace, overtake the trump queen with your king, and play a second club.

West wins the club ace and does best to exit with a club to the queen. You take it, cash the diamond ace, lead the heart 10 to your jack and advance a low spade toward the king. This is a Morton’s Fork: If West plays the ace, you have the entries to pitch your diamond loser on the spades.

So West must play low, and you win the king and cash your last two trumps. In the three-card ending, you will play West to have started with five spades and three diamonds, but watch his discards carefully! If he pitches a diamond, you will know you can cash the diamond king and jack. If he comes down to a bare spade ace, you exit in spades and force him to lead away from the diamond queen.

This position is known as a strip-squeeze, and we will leave any jokes to be made on the table.

One of the most difficult parts of the game is declaring the 4-3 fit, with trump control frequently a paramount issue. So it is rare when playing in a 4-3 fit that you want the outstanding trumps not to break.

However, when the late Alan Truscott (longtime bridge columnist of The New York Times) declared today’s deal, he needed to hope for precisely that.

In response to the double of two spades, Truscott’s three-heart call showed constructive values — with less, he would have bid two no-trump to show fewer than 7 high-card points. His wife, Dorothy, raised to four hearts, aware that it might be a 4-3 fit, but expecting it to be the most practical contract.

Truscott ducked the spade lead, won the next spade and lost the club finesse to East. He won the club return, then ruffed a club back to hand, as East discarded. Since West had at least nine cards in the black suits, Truscott needed West to have no more than one heart.

So, he cashed dummy’s heart king, then three rounds of diamonds, ending in dummy. In the four-card ending, declarer had just two trumps in both hand and dummy, while East had only hearts left. But when he played a club from dummy, East could take no more than his heart queen. If he ruffed low, South would over-ruff, trump a spade with the heart ace and play another club to score his last heart en passant. If East ruffed high, South would discard a spade and win the trump return in hand. Then he could score the trump jack and ace separately.

In today’s deal, let’s look at how North-South should decide whether to play slam, and which contract to head to in a pairs event.

South hears his partner force to game, then support hearts. At his third turn, South can jump to three no-trump to show specifically a strong no-trump in values, plus a spade stopper. With less (or more), he can bid two no-trump, planning to move on with the extras over any signoff from North. North can then select the no-trump slam over hearts, since there is no ruff necessary in his hand.

After a spade lead against six no-trump, most declarers will lose the heart finesse to East, then win the return and cash the heart ace, finessing against East’s 10 and wrapping up 12 tricks. But what if East wasn’t born yesterday and ducks the first heart smoothly? South will probably continue with the heart ace and still emerge with 12 tricks.

Thus, East has to go the extra mile to coax South down the primrose path. He must drop the heart eight under the queen, suggesting that if anyone is long in hearts, it will be West. Be honest: Playing matchpoints as South, wouldn’t you cross back to hand to lead the heart jack, trying to pin East’s putative doubleton 10-8 of hearts? If you do, you will have turned 12 tricks into dust and ashes — and East will own you. Correct is to give up on the overtrick and run the heart nine at trick four, which guards against all possible bad breaks at the cost of the overtrick.

In today’s deal from the annals of the Dyspeptics Club, North felt obligated to double four hearts for takeout, a reasonable action despite holding only three cards in the other major, over which South leapt ebulliently to slam. When dummy came down, South uttered the words no partner of his would ever want to hear: “Might have missed it, partner.”

He won the heart lead and drew three rounds of trumps, his natural optimism abating slightly when they failed to break. Then he could see nothing better than taking the diamond finesse, and his discomfiture was complete when the diamond queen was offside.

Before he could expostulate on his ill luck, North cut him short by remarking that if he had focused on the bad breaks instead of trying to make the overtrick, he might have emerged with less egg on his face. Do you see what he meant?

South should have ruffed a heart at the second trick. Then he could cash the three top spades and go after clubs. It wouldn’t have mattered if East had been able to ruff in, since he would have had nothing but diamonds left to lead into dummy’s tenace. If East didn’t ruff, then when declarer finished running clubs, he could cross to the diamond ace and exit in trump, throwing East in to lead diamonds and concede the contract.

The contract cannot be made if East starts with three hearts and the guarded diamond queen, since he can exit in hearts after ruffing a club.

Put yourself in declarer’s shoes, playing three no-trump as South, before I disclose the theme of today’s deal.

When West leads his long suit against South’s game, declarer should be able to see that the risk of taking the first trick and playing on diamonds is that East will get in with the diamond queen and lead back a heart. This establishes West’s long suit, while that player still has an entry in the form of the diamond ace. Indeed, that is exactly what will happen if South takes the first trick and leads the diamond jack around to East; but South does not have to allow this position to materialize.

The crux of the deal is that South should allow the heart jack to win the first trick, which has the effect of beginning to exhaust East of hearts. East can play a second heart, but South will take West’s heart king in dummy and play a spade to hand, then run the diamond jack.

East gets his diamond queen, but no longer has a heart to play. He shifts to a club, but South carefully hops up with the club ace and plays a second diamond. West can only score one further trick in each minor suit. That is four tricks for the defense — but declarer has his contract.

In a similar position, declarer might be able to tackle diamonds deceptively by leading the suit initially from dummy. (Switch the heart 10 and nine, and declarer might choose to approach the play in this way.)

Schadenfreude, enjoying the discomfort of your friends and acquaintances, is a powerful emotion. It can be entertaining to be a fly on the wall when two teams are scoring up their match, particularly if you are watching friends of yours in the middle of trying to justify their losing efforts. It is not that you want your friends to fail, but you may not mind seeing them do less well than you.

In today’s deal, which came from a Spingold knockout match from a decade ago, I was sitting out for a set and took the opportunity to spectate at the table of some fellow Texans. After the set was over, the scoring-up started, and when it reached this deal my friends called out minus 50. “Lose 10 IMPs” came the riposte, and I could see my friends biting their tongues to keep from asking what had happened, until the scoring was complete.

But after the set was scored, one of them dropped an offhand comment about the deal, and his teammate asked him what had happened. “They led a heart to the jack and queen, and I lost another trick in each side-suit” came the response. “And at your table?”

His teammate replied, “I also led a heart, but declarer cleverly played low from dummy at trick one. He knew he could always finesse against the jack on the next round, but as it was, I had to guess who had the heart 10 at the first trick. When I got it wrong and put up the queen, the hearts played for a discard for the slow club loser.”

At last year’s Yeh Bros. tournament, both North-South pairs bid to four spades here, and they could have doubled their opponents if they had dared to bid on.

In one room, West sacrificed in five hearts doubled; the defenders took their club ruff, then played a top spade. What would you do now? If you tested trumps before ruffing a diamond in dummy, you weren’t quite careful enough. That was what our West did. North was able to pitch spades on the third and fourth diamonds, so though declarer could ruff his diamond loser and unblock the heart ace, he was locked in dummy and had to concede a trump promotion against himself for minus 800. (You have to play three rounds of diamonds without touching trump at all in order to escape for two down.)

In four spades doubled in the other room, the defenders led two rounds of hearts, and South ruffed. Like his teammate, he innocently played a top trump, which should have proved fatal.

He next crossed to dummy in clubs to lead the spade jack — ducked by East, of course — then ran the diamond six around to the queen and ace. West could force declarer in hearts once more, but when East took his diamond king, he did not have a fourth heart left to tap declarer for the last and critical time. So the contract came home. East would have had to fly up with the diamond king on the lead of dummy’s six, to continue with hearts. That would have let his partner play the fatal fourth round of hearts when in with the diamond ace.

Today’s deal was a missed opportunity in the match between Zimmerman and the Netherlands: If the Netherlands had made their game here, they would have won their match instead of missing out on a chance of winning a large prize purse.

For Zimmerman, Lauria-Versace had played in three no-trump rather than four spades. After a club lead, declarer naturally finessed in spades and was down at once.

In the room shown, Simon De Wijs played four spades after a blind auction where his partner’s initial response to his strong club opener had shown a balanced positive. After a trump lead, De Wijs finessed, and Geir Helgemo won to return a club, reasonably enough. What should De Wijs do now?

Declarer led a trump to dummy and a heart to the nine and jack. (Yes, maybe leading the heart 10 from dummy wouldn’t hurt — even against a player of Helgemo’s class.) Back came a club; now De Wijs simply played for hearts to break and went down.

A slight improvement at trick three might have been to lead a high trump from hand, or after playing a trump to dummy, to ruff a club back to hand. When East discards, West is more likely to have begun with honor-doubleton in hearts than with two small, since in that case he likely would have led a heart, not a spade, to trick one.

That being so, the right play is to lead a low heart to the eight at trick four or trick five, as appropriate. As the cards lie, you will now have three heart tricks and your contract.

At the Yeh Bros. tournament last summer, the New Zealand team did not have much to cheer about. But GeO Tislevoll (formerly of Norway, but now a New Zealand resident) found a nice line in the game here.

As South, declaring four hearts after a straightforward, if optimistic, unopposed Drury sequence, he received a club lead. He won the ace and took a spade finesse, then played the ace and another spade, ruffing with the seven. Then he played the club king and ruffed a club, and led his winning spade 10. When East followed small, Tislevoll carefully ruffed it with the jack as West pitched a diamond. That allowed declarer to ruff his last club in dummy and lead dummy’s heart queen.

East had to win his ace, of course, and he was then able to cash the diamond ace, felling his partner’s king for the defenders’ second trick. East could give his partner a diamond ruff now, but GeO’s trump ten-ace of the king-eight was good enough to take the last two tricks when West had to lead away from his 10.

Did you note the defensive resource? When declarer ruffs his winning spade to hand at trick seven, West must underruff, preserving his diamond holding.

The key difference here is that when declarer leads his trump from dummy, East can win the heart ace and underlead his diamond ace. Now the defenders cash two diamonds, ending in East, after which the defense can promote a trump for West on the lead of either plain card in the two-card ending.