The vulnerability persuades you as South to look for a vulnerable game rather than to play for penalties — a correct strategy since even four spades doubled might have been a cheap save against a game here.

When West leads the spade king, the defenders have immediately set up their long suit. After you have won the spade ace on either the first or second round of the suit, what is your plan to take the further eight tricks you need for your game? You can see seven tricks in clubs and hearts, but if you lead a diamond, the defenders will cash out for down one. So, you must find a fourth trick from the hearts.

You can do this if West has exactly five hearts and East’s singleton is the jack, nine or eight. When that singleton is the jack, a low heart to the queen will establish the 10, and you have straightforwardly achieved your goal. But since it is twice as likely that East’s singleton will be the nine or eight, as compared to the jack, you should play for that eventuality.

After taking the spade ace, lead the heart 10 from your hand. West will surely cover with the jack, and dummy’s queen will win the trick. Once the heart eight appears, you will cross to the club ace and lead the heart two to the seven. Next, you unblock hearts and run your nine tricks.

Incidentally, you cannot take any club winners before advancing the heart 10, as it would leave you short of an entry to your hand.

The England women have been consistently successful over the last decade fielding a partnership still in their 20s. Fiona Brown is originally from Australia, but has been living in the U.K. for over 10 years. She played with Susan Stockdale first in junior events, then in women’s events.

Here is Stockdale at work. Declaring four spades, she won the heart lead in dummy to play a spade to the ace (not best, but far from silly), and led her diamond. West won and continued diamonds, letting Stockdale finesse the jack. Next came dummy’s diamond king, on which East pitched her heart. (It would have been better to pitch a club, then shift to hearts at her next turn.) Stockdale discarded a second club on the diamond king and now led a trump. East won the spade queen and played back a top club, which Stockdale ducked. She won the next club, then played the last trump to squeeze West in the red suits for her contract.

For the record, declarer might have cashed the spade king and played a second trump after winning the diamond jack. When East wins and returns a spade, it squeezes West down to one club. Then declarer cashes the club ace, leads the heart seven to the ace, takes the heart queen and leads the heart three to West, forcing a diamond return into dummy’s king-10.

If South forgets to play the heart seven early, West can unblock in hearts to leave South on lead, to concede two club tricks to East.

Here is a deal from the ACBL’s Senior Pairs simultaneous event played in April, rotated 90 degrees. The accompanying commentary suggests that some Easts may open four spades, but those defensive tricks suggest a one-spade bid instead. West will respond one no-trump, and when North doubles, East can rebid two spades. Now South will want to compete, but how?

Depending on your partnership agreements, South’s options may include a take-out double, an artificial two-no-trump call or a simple three-heart bid. When West competes to three spades, par will have been achieved … but if North now bids on to four hearts, the defenders may have their work cut out to set it.

After West leads the spade king, this deal emphasizes that when dummy has a singleton, standard methods of signaling really aren’t good enough. The default method these days appears to be to use suit preference; in other words, a high card from East suggests playing a diamond, and a low spade maybe asks for a club. But here, East wants to encourage a spade continuation, and middle cards are often hard to read. Perhaps if East calls for a club, West can work out that that play can wait?

West can defeat the game by playing another spade. Then East wins the first heart to play the spade ace, forcing dummy to ruff again. East can now follow up with a fourth spade when in with the heart ace, to promote a trump for West.

Today’s deal sees you overcall in spades, then try three no-trump over your partner’s cuebid, since it is fairly typical here that partner is looking for a heart stopper for no-trump. When he bids on, he shows that he is cuebidding for spades, and once you cooperate, East is off to the races. Blackwood sees him put you in slam, and when West leads the heart six, the auction has told you that that suit will be breaking 6-1. You might as well play low from dummy, and capture East’s nine with your ace.

Drawing trumps seems logical, and East pitches a low heart. It now looks obvious to take the club finesse to dispose of one loser, but you actually have two alternative approaches. One line succeeds when East has exactly two diamonds (strip out the clubs, then play three rounds of diamonds, pitching a heart to endplay West). However, that is a relatively remote possibility.

A far better approach is to strip away the diamonds, ruffing the third round in hand. Then play the ace and king of clubs, planning to lead the club jack and pitch a heart. If West wins the trick, he will be forced to give you a ruff-sluff by playing a minor, since you know he is out of hearts. This line succeeds whenever the club finesse would have worked, but also adds on the slim (but not irrelevant) chance that East has the doubleton club queen. Since this line works whenever the club finesse would have succeeded, it is your best play.

One of the most common questions I receive from rubber bridge players who want to learn duplicate is how the approach differs from one game to the other. Today’s deal is a fine example of that difference.

Against three no-trump at both tables, the spade two was led. The first declarer played low from dummy (yes, playing the jack would have had some deceptive effect, but declarer wanted to be in hand), and East won with the king and thoughtfully switched to the heart queen. South ducked two rounds of hearts, but won the third to continue with the diamond queen. East was able to win and cash out for down two.

The second declarer saw the potential problem and rose with dummy’s ace at trick one. She had noticed that her contract would be safe unless diamonds were extremely unfriendly. She came to hand with a top club and led the diamond nine, which held. West showed out on the continuation of the diamond queen, but declarer let it ride, and East had to take the king now or lose it forever. Nine tricks made.

This hand would have been far more difficult to play in a matchpointed duplicate pairs tournament. Declarer now has a very awkward guess at trick one. If West has led a low spade away from the king, then by playing low from dummy and winning with the queen, declarer will end with at least 11 and maybe more. Unless both the spade and diamond finesse lose, the contract will be safe.

In the readers’ letters last month I was asked about how to identify deals on which a squeeze might be relevant. I don’t want to get into Felix Frankfurter’s dictum that you will know it when you see it. Instead, I’ll be trying to show examples over the course of the next month or two.

Typically the possibilities for a squeeze exist when declarer has top winners rather than top losers, and is one trick short of his target. Without being unusually devious, let’s take a hand that lends itself to a squeeze in six hearts. At teams, you wouldn’t really care about the overtrick; but at pairs, the question is how to avoid a diamond loser in six hearts.

The defenders lead a spade against six hearts. You win the ace, and after playing to ruff a club low in hand, you lead out the heart king and jack. When the bad break comes to light, you cross to the diamond king to draw trumps, pitching two diamonds from hand.

The fourth trump puts West under pressure: In the five-card ending, dummy has two diamonds, a spade and a heart, while you have three spades and the bare diamond ace in hand. If West pitches a spade, the spades ruff out; if a diamond, then trick 13 will be won with dummy’s long diamond.

Note that if we change North’s spades to Q-J doubleton, we have a fast loser but no slow losers. So we change our approach: We drive out the spade ace, then ruff a club in hand and pitch dummy’s diamond on the spade winner.

On this deal from the Cavendish pairs, it was demonstrated that the downsides of opening light are not limited to getting too high once in a while. Where I was watching, Amos Kaminski passed the South hand, and a transfer auction to four spades saw Piotr Gawrys (North) have no problems on a club lead.

By contrast, both Geir Helgemo and Fred Stewart opened the South hand, the former fueled by youthful exuberance, and the latter by a strong club system. After a game-forcing trump raise, both played four spades on a diamond lead to the jack.

It looks normal to go after clubs now as East, doesn’t it? Think again — there is no hurry to lead clubs. Partner’s tricks in that suit won’t go away, so now is the time to look for something better.

Both Alain Levy and Roy Welland, at their respective tables, found the devastating trump shift. Declarer took his ace (if he finesses, he is sunk on a second diamond play), but in doing so, lost his only fast entry back to hand.

Each South now tried the club king from hand, but both Wests continued the good work on defense. They ducked the first club, won the second and played a second diamond. Declarer rose with the ace and now only needed to return to hand in order to discard the diamond loser on the clubs.

So they played the heart ace and king, and ruffed a heart high as their hand entry. No such luck! The defense could over-ruff and cash the diamond king for down one.

Zia Mahmood achieved his first reportable coup of the 2001 Cavendish Invitational pairs competition on the very first deal. (And what took him so long, you might ask.) Zia, as South, opened one heart, and his partner, Billy Eisenberg, jumped to three clubs (systematically, to show a limit raise with four trumps or an unbalanced three-card limit raise). Zia tried a delicate six hearts, and Espen Erichsen, as West, led a spade to the king and ace.

When Zia advanced the club queen, Erichsen won with the club king to play a second spade. At this point, Zia had to find the heart queen. He reasoned that Erichsen’s decision to win the club king and return a spade (instead of a trump, or as opposed to letting his partner win the club ace) meant that he must have the heart queen.

Accordingly, Zia, who has never lacked the courage of his convictions, ruffed the spade return and ran the heart jack to make his slam.

I was lucky enough to make the slam against world champion opponents after the defense cashed the club ace and tried to cash the spade ace. Now there were enough inferences for me to negotiate the trump suit, though it was by no means a foregone conclusion to get it right.

While I was happy with my result, I will not name the declarer who made a more expensive play. At another table, Ishmael Del’Monte and Neville Eber got to defend against six diamonds doubled, but declarer misguessed hearts, turning a huge potential gain into a huge loss.

The 2001 Cavendish Invitational pairs competition featured a number of well-played hands. This deal saw two declarers follow similar routes to success.

Guido Ferraro, playing with Giorgio Duboin, declared six hearts on the auction shown. After a spade lead, Ferraro correctly assumed that East’s jump to game — with what appeared to be a Yarborough and only four trumps — argued strongly for shortness in hearts. So he made the critical play when he won the king and cashed the diamond ace and king before leading a heart to the queen.

This maneuver is sometimes referred to as the Dentist’s Coup. It had the effect of extracting West’s troublesome doubleton diamond. Accordingly, when West won the heart ace, he had to return a black suit. That let declarer cross to hand to finesse in hearts and make his slam.

Note that if declarer had not cashed two rounds of diamonds, West could have won the heart ace and exited in diamonds, locking declarer in dummy.

Peter Weichsel and Rose Meltzer reached the same contract on a broadly similar auction where East had also raised spades aggressively. Weichsel received the spade queen lead and played the hand similarly to Ferraro, with one very slight refinement. He won the spade king, cashed the diamond ace and king, then played the heart 10 (unblocking, to facilitate later communication) to his queen and West’s ace. Again, West had to concede a black-suit entry to the South hand, allowing him to take the heart finesse through the opening bidder.