Gone are the days when South would buy the hand in two spades here. West’s shape outweighs his minimum values when it comes to protecting; if the opponents stop in two spades, he must balance and try to push them up or find a making part-score for his side. Similarly, North’s fourth trump persuades him take the push to three spades; then it is up to South to justify his partner’s confidence in him.

Declarer ducks the opening club lead, wins the next club in dummy with the ace and takes the trump ace and king, then ruffs a club to dummy and leads a heart to hand.

Since West has short spades, South assumes he must have a three-suited hand with no other shortage. Equally, though, he cannot have both missing top diamonds, or he would have doubled one spade.

South must hope East does not have the diamond queen. With no other information to go on, declarer might have led a diamond to the 10, but not today, since West surely cannot hold precisely a doubleton diamond queen. Instead, South leads the diamond jack from his hand. West must cover, or declarer will be out of the woods. Declarer puts up the king, and East takes his ace, then cashes his master trump and plays on hearts. South ruffs the third round and must now bring in all the remaining diamonds to make his game.

Since West has diamond length, it must be right now to lead a diamond to the eight, finessing against the nine. When the finesse succeeds, declarer is home.

Today’s deal sees North with enough values to drive to game facing a one-heart opening bid. Since he has a full opener and primary heart support, he starts by responding two diamonds, then jumps to four hearts to suggest a minimum game force and no slam interest.

Digressing for a moment, these aren’t my preferred methods. I’d like a jump to four hearts to be concentrated in the red suits with no controls in the black suits — but that isn’t a majority style.

Anyway, all routes lead to four hearts, and declarer should probably duck the initial spade lead, hoping to cut the defenders’ communications in spades if the suit is originally 5-2. He wins the next spade and plays a diamond to the king. When West gives count in diamonds East ducks the first round of that suit. Declarer now draws trumps in three rounds, then leads a second diamond. Regardless of which diamond declarer plays from dummy, East wins cheaply and returns a club. That lets declarer win in hand and play a third diamond. Now, since East has no spades left to lead, he must concede the rest after winning his second diamond trick.

If declarer makes the mistake of winning the first trick, the defenders will come to four tricks sooner or later. While there are lies of the cards where winning the first trick is necessary, they are few and far between: An original 5-2 spade break with the diamond honors misplaced is far more likely than that.

When North raises his partner’s spades, South does not want to commit the hand to four spades without contemplating three no-trump first. He bids three clubs in the hope that his partner can bid three no-trump, then raises himself to four spades when North signs off. It would be too hard to land on the head of a pin and pass three spades.

The defenders have no reason to do anything but lead three rounds of diamonds. Cover up the East-West cards and decide how you would play the hand as South.

It certainly looks as if you can play on clubs via a finesse or perhaps try to duck a club to West, and force a favorable lead from him. However, even if the club king is offside, which you expect from the fact that West made a simple overcall rather than a weak jump, you have excellent chances for 10 tricks, as long as you are careful.

You ruff the third diamond and play the ace and king of trumps, planning to eliminate hearts and throw West in with the fourth diamond if trumps break. When they do not, you ruff out the heart and play the spade queen. If West comes down to just one diamond and three clubs, you endplay him with the fourth diamond, pitching a club from hand. If he keeps two diamonds and two clubs, you play the ace and another club, and your hand is high.

The defense can prevail, but only if East ruffs the second round of diamonds to play clubs — and who would do that?

At the U.S. National tournament in Philadelphia last March, Sunday’s A/X Swiss Teams saw a match between the Sonsini and van Overbeeke squads. This resulted in an all-Dutch cast at one of the two tables. East-West were Bauke Muller and Simon De Wijs, while North-South were Maarten Schollaardt and Tom van Overbeeke.

In today’s deal, no game looks very promising, but in four spades declarer was lucky to find clubs blocked. On opening lead, De Wijs cashed the club ace-king, then played a diamond. (A trump is no better.) Now declarer pitched his club on dummy’s top hearts, ruffed a heart low in hand, then ruffed a diamond in dummy and ruffed a club high in hand as West pitched a diamond.

Now came a second diamond ruff and a second club ruff high (West underruffing), to reduce to a three-card ending where declarer had the Q-10 of trumps and the diamond queen left. Van Overbeeke led the diamond queen, forcing West to ruff and lead a trump into his tenace to concede the contract.

Perhaps West should have underruffed twice and unblocked the diamond king (in the hope that his partner had the diamond queen), but as the cards lay, the defenders could not get out of their own way. Give East the diamond king, and the double underruff would set the game.

Since three no-trump went down three in the other room, that was a huge swing to the van Overbeeke team.

At the Spring National tournament a year ago in Philadelphia, players came from all around the world to compete in the major events. The Vanderbilt Teams Trophy these days is roughly equivalent to a world championship, and the last eight teams could probably hold their own against most national teams.

This was a very nicely played deal by Tarek Sadek, a long-time regular on the Egyptian team, who had done well to reach the only playable slam on the North-South cards.

West accurately led a club; the lead of the six went to the king and ace. How would you have defended as East now? At the table, East returned the club jack. When given a chance to make his slam, Sadek made no mistake. The critical play was to pitch the spade jack from his hand at trick two, then ruff a small spade in hand. He could go back to the heart ace to ruff a second spade in his hand, then draw trumps and go to the diamond ace to run spades.

In fact, the defenders had two chances to beat the slam after the club lead. East could have removed a critical entry to dummy by playing either red suit, after which declarer would no longer be able to ruff out the spades. After a diamond shift (the best play, to remove the side entry to dummy), declarer could either play to ruff a diamond in dummy or for a spade finesse, allied to some additional squeeze chances. However, today, every line would fail.

When this deal originally appeared at the U.S. National tournament held in Philadelphia last year, it was called “Campanologist’s Delight.”

The author indicated that readers of bridge columns are always either advantaged or handicapped — depending on how you look at it — by the bell going off. When faced with a problem, the reader is always led to the critical decision and thus imperceptibly biased in his thought process. He is unable to play as he would have played if he had not been warned he was at the crossroads.

With that in mind, let us look at this deal from the second final session of the Rockwell Mixed Pairs. You sit East, and against three no-trump your partner leads a fourth-highest club five. You are allowed to win the queen and can see nothing better than to return the suit. Your partner wins the ace and returns the seven to clear the suit. Declarer wins the club jack and advances the diamond queen. Do you win or duck — and if you win, what do you return?

Answer: It doesn’t matter, because you can no longer beat three no-trump! If you failed to play the club 10 at trick one, you won’t beat the game. Your partner either has jack-sixth of clubs, in which case your play doesn’t matter at all, or his actual holding. If the latter, you want to persuade declarer to take his jack at the first trick, after which clubs will be ready to run.

Declarer can survive by not winning the club jack, but will he? I think not!

From the Silodor Open Pairs in Philadelphia last year, this challenge for both declarer and the defense saw Simon Cope and Peter Crouch, the eventual winners of the event, emerge on top.

In three no-trump after the spade nine lead, Crouch discouraged, perhaps suggesting he had the heart king. Declarer won the queen and decided that the right approach was to start with the club finesse. So he played the club king and a club to the jack, which held. Relieved, declarer could take the diamond finesse, thinking that if it lost to the diamond queen, he could reassess what to do.

To his pleasure, the diamond jack won as well. Declarer could now lead a heart to the ace, and rather than cashing the club ace (which would have squeezed his hand), he played a second diamond. He planned to score two spades, one heart, four diamonds and two clubs.

However, he was shocked when East showed out, and his plans collapsed; ducking the first diamond was very nice defense by Cope (West).

As usual, with the sight of all four hands, South can do much better; indeed, three no-trump is cold. Admittedly, though, you need to make the inspired move of laying down the diamond king at trick two — not obvious by any means! If the defenders win the first or second diamond, you set up diamonds using the club reentry to your hand. If they duck twice, you play on clubs and take four tricks there.

Neil Silverman and Robert Lebi have each represented their countries, the U.S. and Canada, respectively, but they were playing together in Philadelphia last spring. Here, Silverman had an opportunity to test his skills after Lebi had shown a distributional raise in hearts by his jump to three hearts at his first turn. Modern expert technique is tending to an approach in which most limit raises start with a cue-bid. Accordingly, the jump raise has morphed over the years from a forcing raise to a limit raise to a pre-emptive raise. These days, though, many use the jump raise as somewhere between a limit raise and a pre-emptive raise.

Silverman bid on to five hearts over five diamonds. After the lead of the diamond king, East went up with the ace, planning to continue the attack on diamonds. Declarer ruffed and led the club 10 from hand (just in case) to dummy’s queen. When that held, he ran the heart queen, covered all around, then drove out the club ace. West now played a second diamond, and Silverman pitched a club from hand, leaving the defense helpless. Whoever won the diamond would have to lead a spade or diamond. Declarer could ruff the diamond in dummy and pitch a spade from hand, then advance the heart nine and bring hearts in for no loser.

If East had been able to win the second diamond, declarer could have adopted the same approach, but would have needed the spade finesse to work.

These days in almost every auction where the opponents bid or double, it is possible for responder to play transfers — and today’s deal from the Silodor Open Pairs in Philadelphia last year was no exception. The auction might have developed in a similar fashion, with South declaring three diamonds, if West had made a pre-emptive jump to two spades, but his initial call of two hearts showed six spades of indeterminate range.

The question of how many tricks South would emerge with in three diamonds had a slightly surprising answer, though. You’d expect West to lead a doubleton club and South to take East’s queen, draw trumps in two rounds, then set up a club for the ninth trick.

Instead, East managed to throw an intriguing diversion at the first trick when he played the club king, trying to suggest a different lie of that suit to declarer.

It worked to perfection! South was now sure West had three clubs and six spades, and clearly at least three hearts from the bidding. So she drew just one round of trumps with the ace and played a second club. East won the queen and could have played for the spade ruff, but that would have produced only four tricks. Instead, he cashed the heart king as West gave count, then played a third club. Declarer guessed to discard a spade, and West ruffed in with the jack and played the spade ace and a second spade to give partner the ruff and set the hand.