In today’s deal, the contract in each room in a teams game was three no-trump, and at both tables the lead was the spade jack.

At the first table, after winning in hand, declarer led a low heart and ducked West’s eight. East overtook with the nine and continued with a second top heart. South won in hand and turned his attention to clubs, finessing the queen. This lost to the king and back came another heart. Can you see declarer’s winning line now? South failed when he played on clubs: He needed instead to take all his spade and diamond winners, then exit with a heart. East would have been able to cash two more hearts, but would then have to lead a club and let declarer score two more club tricks.

The second declarer won the spade lead and decided that his best chance would come from setting up one more trick in the club suit. At trick two, he crossed to the club ace, then advanced a low club from dummy. East put up the jack, and now the club 10 and queen were equals and could be established for declarer’s ninth trick.

If East had played low, would South have followed low, or would he have inserted the club 10? If the 10 lost to the jack, declarer would have regained the lead and led up toward the queen at his next turn. The only time that it is wrong to put up the 10 is when West started with exactly the doubleton club jack.

My ventures to the local club often yield curious results, but this deal from the Common Game six months ago produced a more unusual conclusion than usual.

Readers are asked to guess which card won trick 13 in four hearts. As you might expect from the introduction, best play was not necessarily involved. And yes, readers may guess which seat I was occupying, if they like.

West led the spade jack against four hearts, and East encouraged with the eight, letting South win the queen and lead a club to the king — correct defense by West to duck the club ace.

Now declarer made her first slight slip by leading the diamond 10 (maybe low to the jack was better, though that is debatable). This was covered by the queen and ace.

At this point, it seems right to play for diamond ruffs, but declarer made a serious error by cashing the heart ace and leading to the jack. When you want to ruff, don’t draw trumps. East won the queen to continue with the spade king, and declarer took the ace, drew the last trump, led a diamond to the jack, and exited in spades.

Now West won and played the 13th spade. South ruffed and led the diamond nine, allowing East to take his king and get out with a club. At trick 12, South ruffed and led her last card, the diamond four, and East triumphantly scored his five, more to his surprise than you might have expected.

Today’s deal offers an interesting declarer-play problem both for North and South. Let’s look at four hearts on the bidding shown, with South in the hot seat.

Game is easy to reach and appears to be a good contract. It gets worse, though, when West leads the club queen and the defense takes three tricks in that suit. As declarer, you should refrain from contributing the club king on either the first or second round of the suit from dummy since East (unless West is a very calculating customer) has the ace — but it might be singleton or doubleton. When East wins the third club, he will probably play the diamond king, taken by the ace.

One chance is that the spades will split 33, but there is also a squeeze chance. The only trick you are worrying about is the last, so lead out all the trumps. Lo and behold, East cannot keep the diamond queen and his spades!

This is the simplest of squeezes, but now imagine you are declaring four hearts from North on a top diamond lead, perhaps after an optimistic two-no-trump opener and a transfer sequence. Instead of relying on a squeeze here, you simply draw trumps and play four rounds of spades. If the suit breaks, you pitch your diamond from dummy. If it does not, you ruff the fourth spade and exit with the diamond jack to East, who must break clubs for you or give you a ruff-sluff. Either way, you are home safe with 10 tricks.

After South opens with two no-trump to show a balanced 22 to 24 points, what should North do? If North’s long suit were a major, he would transfer into it. But one should only do the same with a minor if there is a possibility of slam in the air. Here, North knows that his side probably belongs in three no-trump, so why help the opponents by telling them about his diamonds? North should simply raise to game in no-trump — though give dummy as little as Q-10-fourth of clubs instead of his actual holding, and North might want to consider making a slam try.

When dummy comes down after West’s small heart lead, South sees he has five top tricks in spades, clubs and hearts, with only slim chances for developing another trick from the black suits. He therefore needs only four tricks in diamonds to guarantee his contract.

This in turn suggests that at both teams and rubber bridge, South should take the safety play of cashing the ace, then deliberately ducking the second round of diamonds to protect against a 4-1 break in that suit.

As shown in the diagram, South’s precaution is needed to assure the contract today. If South wins the second diamond in dummy, he can take only three tricks in that suit. His best play would be to turn his attention to clubs, but when that suit also fails to break, he emerges with only eight tricks. Still, at pairs, where every trick counts, when you are in a normal contract, it might make sense to go down in the search for an overtrick.

At the 1996 World Championship quarterfinals in Rhodes, Greece, most North-Souths maneuvered themselves into three no-trump by South on a heart lead after West had shown a weak two in hearts.

In one match, South took the heart king and played the club king, and East erred by taking her club ace to play a second heart back. There was really no rush, since declarer was unlikely to have nine sure tricks. Declarer covered the heart six with the nine, and West naturally cashed her heart ace, after which declarer was home free.

At the other table in this match, East correctly ducked the club king. Now declarer crossed to the diamond king and played the club queen. All East had to do was win it and return a club, and the defense would have prevailed. But East played a second heart, and again the defensive communications had been cut.

In both the Open and Women’s series, almost every East besides Irina Levitina of the U.S. failed to duck the first club and continue the suit when declarer played it again. The defense was so blinded by the distraction in hearts that they could not see the simple way to defeat the contract.

Was there anything that declarer could have done about a correct defense? Yes, as Alfredo Versace for Italy demonstrated. Once the club king held the trick, declarer could cut the defensive communications by playing back a top heart himself! The defenders could take only four tricks now, no matter what they did next.

The art of the striptease can be perfected at the bridge table as well in the nightclub. If you can draw trumps and leave yourself with at least one trump in each hand, you can often remove cards from unimportant suits and throw the opponents on lead. You can then force them to give a ruff-sluff or to open up a suit to your advantage. This strategy will also work in no-trump, though not as frequently.

In today’s deal, consider the play in four spades on a neutral trump lead. The correct approach after winning the second trump is to play the club ace and a second club, since this is the suit where there is no benefit in having the opponents tackle the suit as opposed to leading it yourself. East’s best play is to win the club and shift to the diamond 10. There is no good reason not to finesse, but when West covers your jack, you win the king and play two more rounds of diamonds.

East will win the third diamond and shift to a heart (probably a low one, since this would beat the contract by force if the heart nine and seven were switched). You run the heart around to dummy, capturing West’s jack with the ace, then finesse against the queen to make 10 tricks.

As a side note, if East shifts to the heart queen at trick eight, he presents you with a choice: Will you play him for both heart honors or just the queen? Unless East is an expert, assume he has both honors.

After West showed the majors and North doubled, suggesting a defensive hand, South’s first thought was to try to reach no-trump. But when North suggested diamond support and extras, South took a shot at the slam.

He captured the lead of the spade king and was almost ready to claim his contract, but he was jolted back to reality when West failed to follow to the diamond ace.

It now seemed that he might need West to hold the club queen, or for the heart queen to fall from East. But before committing himself in hearts, declarer saw that he might achieve an endplay, as long as East’s major-suit holdings could be eliminated.

East was marked with no more than one heart, but if he also held just three spades, which would be consistent with the action, the position of the club queen might turn out to be irrelevant.

A trump to dummy’s king allowed declarer to trump a spade in hand. Then a heart to the king was followed by the ruff of dummy’s third spade. South now took the last necessary precaution of cashing his club king, then took the heart ace — just in case. Whether East ruffed with his master trump now or waited until he was endplayed with that card at the next trick, he would eventually have to play a club around to North. Either way, South’s losing heart could be discarded.

Note that if South doesn’t cash the club king before playing the third diamond, East can exit with a club, after which the clubs are blocked.

Whether to balance into your opponents’ auction is often a simple decision, and players become used to evaluating their hands well enough that they tend to know when it is right to bid and when to pass.

Occasionally more complex is how the partner of the balancer should react when the auction continues after the opponents compete again. The question may be just how many of your own values have been bid by your partner already! It is often the case that he has bid every single one of them — and sometimes even more.

In today’s deal, North was faced with just such a decision. He was swayed into competing again because it sounded like both sides had a double fit, and the vulnerability meant he might be able to afford to be off a trick in his calculations and still not be severely punished.

He was absolutely right, with both sides having play for their three-level contracts. In three spades, South ruffed the third diamond and led a heart to the nine and queen, then won the trump return to eliminate the trumps and hearts. At this point, he knew West to have started with a 2=5=4=2 pattern, and to have 10 points in the red suits. So, he needed a club honor to justify his opening bid, which in turn meant declarer could guarantee his contract by playing the ace and another club. West did his best by unblocking his club king, but the defenders could score only one club trick, no matter what.

Today’s deal from a recent tournament appeared under the headline of the old proverb: “For the want of a nail, the horseshoe was lost.”

As the writer indicated, it is probably lucky for all of us how rarely our small inaccuracies are as heavily punished as was the case today. If we all got our just deserts, life at the bridge table would be no fun at all.

You could argue that East-West did not deserve a good result, given East’s overcall in spades on that miserable five-carder, though it did get his partner off to the best lead against no-trump. (Of course, West led the spade two, which had the effect of blocking the suit.) North-South had certainly done well to get to the best game; now all South had to do was make the maximum.

Declarer won the first spade and had to decide what to do next. What would you have done? South missed the technically best play (as might we all), of cashing the diamond ace at trick two. Instead she tried to run the clubs and got the bad news when West pitched two hearts and then a spade.

Now declarer finessed the diamond jack and ran into about the only lie of that suit that could hold her to eight tricks. If she had cashed one top diamond at trick two, she would have taken four tricks in the suit instead of two, which would have represented about half a top difference in the results on this deal.