The Cavendish Invitational brings together the world’s best pairs and teams for a week of competition with some of the largest cash prizes in bridge. It is currently held in Monaco, but for many years it was organized in Las Vegas. One of the favorites in those years was the partnership of Brad Moss and Fred Gitelman, who had considerable success both as a partnership and individually. Gitelman combines a talent for playing the game with a real acumen for marketing the game through computers and the internet.

Gitelman is the developer of Bridge Master, educational software that features many useful elements of technique to improve the game of everyone from beginners to experts. It was therefore especially piquant that today’s deal cropped up as a problem for Gitelman in the 2001 Cavendish Pairs.

Of all the little-known percentage plays, one of the most obscure is featured in the spade suit on this deal. There might be something to be said for playing six clubs here, but six no-trump looks like the more normal spot. How should you play the key suit of spades to maximize your chances for four tricks?

The answer is to run the spade queen! If the suit is 3-3, you have a blind guess; if the suit is 4-2, you can pick up three of the four honor-doubletons by leading the queen. No other play achieves that result. It is only fitting that when Gitelman was faced with the challenge in six no-trump, he duly made the right play and was rewarded when the cards cooperated.

When this deal came up at the 2001 Cavendish teams event in Las Vegas, the daily bulletin remarked that Bruce Ferguson has made a career of trying to fool all of the people all of the time. The more outrageous things he does, the more people suspect him, so he has to keep trying ever more unusual tricks. But he still keeps reeling in the victims!

Consider this affair from the last match of the teams, where he caught another world champion and added yet one more notch to his belt.

If you play three no-trump as South, as did the vast majority of the field, you find the cards lying exceptionally well. With the diamond ace doubleton and spades and hearts apparently favorably located, it looks very hard to go down.

As West, Ferguson started the war of attrition by leading a deceptive heart four, playing fourth-highest leads. When you have a hand this strong, that can be a good move. When South ducked the first heart, Ferguson had won the first battle. Back came a second heart; South won, crossed to a top diamond and passed the club queen. Ferguson won and put the spade four on the table!

Declarer eyed this suspiciously and decided to duck. We can all see that this may not be technically supportable, but Ferguson had given him the chance to go wrong, and he took it. Now, when the club finesse lost, West had five winners. Ferguson left the table chortling, with yet another victim added to what is by now a rather long list.

Today’s deal from the 2001 Cavendish Invitational teams event is a curiosity: How often do you gain IMPs for going five down in a freely bid game?

At one table, where Jon Wittes and Ross Grabel of the Onstott team were East and West respectively, their opponent in the North seat opened two spades. I’m not sure I agree with that action, and not just because the spade suit isn’t really strong enough for it. The problem is that the hand is so playable in two other denominations, and the combination of that with the two aces means that you will occasionally mislead your partner as to what your hand is all about. It rarely works as badly as it did today, however.

Over the two-spade pre-empt, Grabel (West) balanced with three diamonds, and Wittes bid three no-trump. There the matter rested, and after a club lead, the defenders took seven clubs and two aces, which was down five for minus 500. No double, no trouble.

The auction from the other room was as shown here. Roger Bates was South and Jim Robison North, the latter judging the auction very nicely by staying silent initially, then more than making up for it later. As the auction progressed, he could infer his partner’s length in hearts, and the potential of his own hand increased even further.

After a spade lead, Bates was able to pitch his diamond and crossruff. With trumps splitting 1-1, the play was straightforward for plus 1,540 and a gain of 14 IMPs.

The ACBL organizes simultaneous pairs every year to benefit various different activities, and last month they had a senior pairs, with duplicated hands all around the U.S., plus a book of commentary.

This deal tickled my fancy because I suspect that the play that would produce the best result possible for the East-West pairs on defense would escape most people, even with the sight of all four hands.

Let’s look at how the bidding might develop. When East pre-empts to two hearts over North’s one-club opener, South can double, then introduce spades, or bid and rebid spades, neither of which would be forcing, though the second route suggests a real invitation. However, both approaches should see South declare three spades.

Strangely, however, it is hard to defeat four spades after the South captures the heart queen lead. West must duck his diamond ace at trick two. If South wins the diamond king then runs the spade nine around to him, West must next take his diamond ace and shift to a club.

Now if declarer cashes both top clubs and leads a third, East ruffs in with the spade jack and West will be able to avoid any end-play easily enough. But if South instead ruffs the second club in hand and cashes the spade ace, West must unblock in trumps to avoid the throw-in! If he doesn’t, he will be forced to win the third spade and lead a minor, after which dummy’s winners will let declarer discard his heart losers.

When I saw this deal reported from Honors Bridge Club in New York, it was written up with the heading of “The Curse of Scotland?” It came up in December 2017, and it was a hand where East-West were robbed of a chance for brilliancy — all because of the diamond nine.

Judy Weisman sat West, and she started the defense on the right lines when she led the club king, an inspired shot against the slam, because it forced declarer to take his discards at once. (If declarer had had a singleton spade, he would have been forced to cut his own communications.)

Declarer won the club ace and played two top spades, pitching a club on the first. Put yourself in East’s shoes and plan the defense. Lipkin found the defense that would set the hand no matter which three diamonds his partner had. He ruffed with the ace (an unnatural play in my opinion) to return a diamond; that killed declarer’s chances since, whatever he did, he was left with a heart loser.

As the cards lay, Lipkin could have ruffed with the diamond 10 — but only because his partner had the diamond nine (the Curse of Scotland). For example, switch the nine and eight of trumps, and declarer would over-ruff the diamond 10 with the jack, then play the heart ace and ruff a heart. He could now lead a spade and maneuver to draw trumps without West being able to promote a trump.

One of my occasional correspondents is Maureen Hiron, who lives in Spain but writes a newspaper column for Ireland. She commented that she had first met this type of hand early in her bridge career, and her partner bawled her out for going down. When a similar situation arose a short while later, she knew what to do. As Hiron said, the good bridge player only makes the same mistake four times. By the fifth time, she has learned her lesson.

Barring bizarre distribution, the only thing that could go wrong in six hearts was the trumps breaking 4-1 or worse. If West holds the length, you are doomed; but if East has the critical holding, you may be able to survive as long as you take the appropriate precautions early.

Against the slam, West cashed the diamond ace and continued the suit. Hiron won in hand and noticed that if East did indeed hold jack-fourth in trumps, she would need to reduce her trump holding to parity with East, ending with the lead in dummy.

So at trick three, she took the spade ace then ruffed a spade, reducing South’s trump holding to five. Then came the heart ace and a heart to the king to find the bad news.

However, another spade ruff reduced the South trump holding to the same length as East’s. Hiron could then take her minor-suit winners, ending in dummy with the club ace, and she was happy to see East follow throughout. In the two-card ending, a spade from dummy caught East’s trump jack under South’s Q-10 of hearts.

As South in today’s auction, should you have bid four no-trump over four diamonds? Against five clubs, West leads the spade king, and East shows an even number of spades. You win the ace and cash the trump ace, on which West discards a low spade. How do you plan to take 11 tricks?

West has at least 5-5 in the majors and a trump void, so you should play him for an original distribution of 5=5=3=0 pattern. This leaves East with a likely starting shape of 2=1=6=4.

Your aim is to strip East of his major-suit cards and all but one trump; then you can endplay him with a club to force him to play a diamond: if so, you will make a spade, a two hearts, two diamonds and six trumps.

After winning the first trick with the spade ace and drawing a round of trumps, simply advance the spade 10 at trick three. West can do no better than win the trick with the jack and play another high spade. The trap to avoid is ruffing this trick with the two. Instead, you must ruff the third round of spades with the six, draw two more rounds of trumps, cash the high hearts (East will discard a diamond) and then endplay East by leading your two of clubs to his three — assuming East has done his best to unblock in trumps.

East will only have diamonds remaining, so you will make dummy’s two top diamonds along with six trumps and three winners in the majors, for a total of 11 tricks in all.

Australia’s most consistent pair in the early part of this last decade was Sartaj Hans and Tony Nunn. On this deal, from a recent World Championship match between Australia and the U.S., Hans played skillfully to land a contract that failed at many tables.

Against three no-trump, Marty Fleisher for the U.S. led the spade four, taken by his partner Mike Kamil with the king. On the spade return, Fleisher ducked declarer’s jack. Hans now played a diamond to dummy’s ace, cashed the diamond king and ran the club 10 to West’s jack. A low spade cleared the suit and put the lead in dummy.

At this point, most of the unsuccessful declarers took a second club finesse and lost two clubs and three spades. Hans instead saw that he needed only two club tricks, but that he surely needed to keep West off lead. So he played a club to his ace, then cashed his two diamond winners, pitching a heart from dummy on the first.

Fleisher could spare a heart on the third round of diamonds, but he had to let go of a spade on declarer’s final diamond — pitching a heart honor would have let dummy throw a club. Declarer would then have been able to lead out the heart queen to establish a second heart trick.

Once West discarded a spade, Hans pitched a second heart from dummy and set up the clubs, leaving Fleisher on lead. The defense could cash a spade, but then had to concede the last two tricks to dummy.

With both North and South having five hearts and a decent hand, it’s easy to imagine them going overboard, or at least to the five-level. However, at the table both players exercised restraint, South down-valuing his hand out of a strong no-trump, and North merely inviting game. So now all South needs to do is make 10 tricks.

On the passive diamond lead, South should expect to lose a trump trick, so he must limit the loss in the black suits to two tricks. If he is not careful, he will also lose two clubs and one spade. The way to make sure of the contract is to force the opponents to lend their assistance and open up those suits to his advantage.

Declarer starts by winning the diamond ace and leading the heart jack, perhaps intending to let it run, but hoping East will incautiously cover from a doubleton honor. When the queen appears, South wins and cashes the diamonds before taking the spade ace and putting the defense in with a spade.

If East wins, he will have to open up clubs sooner or later. As it is, West wins and cashes the heart king, but must then lead clubs. Dummy plays low, and East can win the first club, but he must now concede.

If South had exited in hearts at trick five, West would have won and broken up the endplay by leading clubs. If declarer instead takes the spade finesse, either a club or the heart king followed by a second spade from West should suffice to set the hand.