GeO Tislevoll was East here when his partner led the spade ace against four hearts. He followed with the two, suit preference for clubs. His partner played the club ace and another club, and he won the king as the declarer followed suit. What now?

With two trumps in dummy and a side-suit void, it seems normal to play back a trump, but Tislevoll realized that if he was going to set the contract, his partner would need a trump trick. (As a passed hand, West could not have three aces.)

Since a heart or diamond could not achieve anything, he realized a spade was all that was left. In that case, his best hope was to play the spade 10, not the king. That could give declarer a cheap spade trick, but it might not matter. The hope was that South had a 3=7=1=2 shape, with the singleton diamond ace. If declarer tried to ruff the spade in dummy and played the club queen, East would ruff in. Whatever happened, South would be left with an inevitable spade loser.

Yes, the contract can be beaten with a trump lead, and another trump when West gets in with the spade ace (or a low club shift at trick two for an eventual uppercut). However, leading the spade ace is only human. Also, it might seem natural for West to switch to a trump at trick two, but that would be fatal. Declarer wins, unblocks the diamond ace, ruffs a spade and can cash three diamonds to get rid of his remaining black losers.

Today’s deal features a maneuver that every declarer should have at his disposal.

Imagine that you play it in three no-trump on the lead of the spade jack. Naturally, you put up the queen. In the unlikely event that East wins the ace and returns the suit, you will duck once, win the third spade and try to set up clubs without letting West on lead. You will be able to accomplish this whenever East has three clubs or with quite a few of his possible doubletons. For example, if West has any three clubs including the four, he will have to follow with that card on either the first or second round of the suit, and you can simply cover that card and keep him off play.

Curiously, the reverse logic applies if the spade queen wins trick one. Now you have to set up clubs, without letting East on lead if possible, which might be more difficult than it looks if East has three clubs.

It is crucial to maximize your entries to hand by leading the heart queen to your king and then a low club toward dummy’s honors. When West plays the 10, you win the king and follow up with dummy’s low heart to your jack. Now you lead a club, ducking West’s queen. East cannot overtake, and West cannot broach spades from his side, so he will get off play with a red suit.

Whatever he does, though, you have one spade trick, one diamond, three hearts and four clubs, making nine tricks in total.

Have you ever experienced a sinking feeling when an opponent who is not generally ranked in the top echelon of players suddenly produces a devastating defense against you?

Recently, a fellow writer, Maureen Hiron, remarked that she encountered just such an incident. She had opened a strong no-trump and, after a Stayman inquiry, showed her hearts, but North’s three no-trump ended the auction. West led the diamond four; you might find it interesting to see if you can duplicate East’s defense.

Without apparent thought, East took his ace and switched to a low spade. Hiron played low, West won with his king and returned the spade eight. South tried the nine from dummy, tempting a cover, but East played low and Hiron was forced to overtake with her ace.

Next she tried a cunning heart jack, but West hopped up with his ace and concluded the deadly defense when he led back another spade for East to take his spade winners and defeat the contract.

Later, East explained the logic of his play, saying that since the diamond four had been led and he could see the three and the two, declarer must hold four cards in the suit as well as four hearts.

South was also marked with three clubs (or else West would have attacked from a five-card suit at trick one), and therefore just two spades. However, what made the hand really easy was that he had played this hand the day before in a practice class, and it had not been redealt…

Larry Cohen has written material for players at all levels. In one of his intermediate books, he discusses card reading, and he gives this example of the theme.

In fourth seat, North gets to open one club. After some exuberant bidding, South ends up in three no-trump and receives the lead of the diamond two. East puts up the diamond king and returns a low diamond. Declarer has no real choice but to try the queen, more in hope than expectation. When it holds, declarer can count on five club tricks, one diamond and two spades. The ninth trick will have to come from hearts.

Declarer can run the clubs first, ending in hand, and then lead a low heart toward dummy’s king. When West plays low, declarer has to guess … or does he? Fortunately, at this point in the play, he can confidently expect 4-4 diamonds. If that were not the case, West would win the heart ace and cash out, or East would be sitting with a bunch of winners to cash.

So let’s assume the defense can take only three diamond tricks. If declarer gets hearts wrong, he will go down; but did you remember the bidding? East dealt and passed. He is already inferentially marked with the diamond ace-king and at least one spade honor (West would surely have led from the queen-jack of spades). If East also held the heart ace, he would have opened the bidding. So, declarer should guess correctly and put up dummy’s heart king for his ninth trick.

The Principle of Fast Arrival in game-forcing auctions proposes that instead of exploring carefully, you jump to game (wasting at least a full round of bidding) to make your partner guess what to do when he has extras. This is not my favorite convention.

By contrast, here North’s jump to three no-trump shows about 15-17 with two or three spades. With less, or more, North would bid two no-trump. When South produces a quantitative four no-trump, North reveals his spade support, and West leads the heart two against six spades, to the queen and king. Back comes a trump to the eight; can you identify declarer’s best line now?

Instead of relying on the red suits to behave, South cashes the club ace, ruffs a club high in hand, gets to dummy with a trump and discovers they split. (If they didn’t, declarer would instead finesse hearts, then test diamonds, hoping, if they didn’t break, that the same hand was long in both spades and diamonds.)

When spades divide, South ruffs another club high, takes the diamond ace, then re-enters dummy with a diamond to ruff dummy’s last club. He goes back to dummy with the heart ace and draws trumps, discarding his losing heart.

In the two-card ending, dummy has the heart 10 and a diamond, while declarer has the diamond Q-9 in hand. Even if diamonds cannot be brought in, declarer has the additional chance (as here) that the hand with long diamonds also has the heart jack and is thus squeezed in the red suits.

In America, bridge tournaments focus on the bridge. The target is to play two sessions, and at least 50 deals a day. In France, even at the major regional events, players tend to compete in only one long session per day, and that leaves room for the beach in the morning and an extended dinner at night. Cannes and Biarritz are the models for these tournaments, and today’s deal comes from the latter event.

Pierre Saporta was declarer here, on a deal where most of the field had brought home five diamonds painlessly, after a spade lead allowed declarer to get three ruffs in dummy. But against Saporta’s contract of five diamonds doubled, West irritatingly found the best defense of a trump lead. East won the ace and continued the suit; put yourself in declarer’s position and take it from there.

Saporta drew the correct inference that East’s rebid suggested extra values, probably with a 5-3-3-2 pattern. So he won the second round of trumps with dummy’s 10 and immediately led and passed the club 10. West took that with the queen, but there was no further chance for the defense. Declarer could ruff the spade continuation, cash the club and heart aces, then ruff one loser heart in dummy and discard his remaining hearts on dummy’s club winners.

Had East covered the club 10, might South have assumed that East had queen-jack-third of clubs? Then he might have led a club back to the ace to try to ruff out the remaining club honor.

This deal comes from a pairs event at a national tournament, and it features two experts in a high-level game of chicken. It was Roger Bates and Chris Willenken who crossed swords here — and Bates prevailed in the end.

After a simple auction to three no-trump, Bates received the heart jack lead and immediately passed the diamond eight. Willenken ducked it, thereby doing his best to get his name in the papers. Now if declarer repeats the diamond finesse, he will go down.

But Bates knew his defenders were capable of the ducking play from any holding that included the jack. The opening lead made it relatively unlikely that West had four diamonds to the jack, and who would want to fall victim to such a play? You’d never hear the end of it!

So he rejected the second finesse, playing diamonds from the top and emerging with 10 tricks. Nicely defended, but it was Bates whose name was recorded in the “highly commended” column.

For the record, if East wins the diamond jack at his first turn, it makes it easy for declarer to establish the suit. The defenders can subsequently duck the diamond ace for as long as they like, but dummy still has an entry in the form of the heart ace, which will grant access to the rest of the diamonds. Ducking in a suit where the defenders have two stops (normally the ace-king or ace-queen) is often effective when dummy has just one entry to a long suit.

Today’s hand posed a challenge in both the bidding and the play. Three no-trump is not a bad contract — it needs the opponent’s spades to split 4-4, or for the diamond finesse to win. Of the seven-card fits, four hearts may be an easier game to play, but five diamonds certainly has plenty of chances. At the table, though, the winning play was far from obvious, and declarer missed it completely.

Against the diamond game, West led the spade queen, and declarer felt that his best chance lay in ruffing spades on the table. He won, trumped a spade, came to hand with the heart ace and trumped another spade. Now, stuck in dummy, he cashed the club ace and ruffed a club. He followed with the diamond ace, king and jack, but when West took his queen, he was able to cash the spade jack and lead another spade. That forced declarer and allowed West to score his small trump to defeat the game.

It would not have not helped South to ruff only one spade before starting on trumps; then he would lose two spades and a diamond. But declarer can succeed by the unusual expedient of ducking the opening spade lead, a play cynics would say crops up more often in books than at the table.

Say that West switches to a heart; South wins the ace, ruffs a spade and plays a trump. He has retained complete control and loses only one trick in each of the minors. He emerges with four diamonds, four hearts and two black aces, plus a single spade ruff.

Against four hearts, West led the club king, and on seeing dummy’s singleton, switched to the spade jack. South won with the queen and could now see 10 tricks, as long as trumps broke 3-2. The heart ace was followed by another heart to the king. South now decided he had to guess the diamonds correctly in order to make his game. As the cards lay, his line was going to generate either nine tricks or 11.

Based on his knowledge of the heart layout, Declarer continued with the diamond king, then led low to the 10. Upon winning with the queen, East returned a spade, which was won by the ace. A club was ruffed in dummy, and the trump queen was cashed, but when declarer followed up with a diamond, East ruffed in and played a spade for the setting trick.

There are two better lines here. One is to draw trumps with the king and ace. Now you can lead a diamond to the 10 with the communications in diamonds still in place. But a far better line is to draw three rounds of trumps, then take the diamond ace. Next lead a low diamond from dummy. If East can trump in, he would just be ruffing a loser. If East follows (or discards), take the king and play a third diamond. Either defender may be able to win and return a spade. However, you simply take your ace and play the established diamond jack, discarding dummy’s losing spade. East may ruff, but that will be the last trick for the defense.