Deals from the Common Game are played virtually simultaneously across North America and provide a splendid opportunity to compare results from city to city or club to club. Today’s deal was a problem I was given from one of these tournaments, and it required some thought for me to come up with the winning line. See if you can find the optimum strategy to make six hearts when West meanly leads a trump.

It looks relatively clear to win the heart queen at the first trick, preserving dummy’s small hearts to ruff losers. Next, you cash the three top spades, pitching diamonds at every turn. Yes, if a defender ruffs in, your chances go up in smoke, but you are going to need some good news somewhere along the way, and spades will break in friendly fashion two times in three.

When the three top spades stand up, you play the club ace and ruff a club, lead a diamond to the ace and ruff a club, then ruff a diamond in hand and draw trumps, losing the last club trick to one defender or the other.

As you can see from the full layout, the real danger is a trump promotion for the defense in either clubs or diamonds. Specifically, the fourth round of spades or the third round of diamonds from East may promote a trump for West unless you are very careful in your choice of early discards.

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In today’s deal, South heard West pre-empt in clubs over his one-spade opener. Now, when North cue-bid four clubs, this was a forcing raise in spades but did not promise a club control. South signed off in game to end the auction. When West led the club queen, East won the ace. South could take the club return, draw trumps and ruff dummy’s last club in hand; but now what?

Either a good guess in diamonds or finding the heart queen onside would see declarer safely home. Or, if hearts broke 3-3, one of dummy’s diamonds could be discarded on the 13th heart.

Accordingly, South continued with a heart to the jack and queen. Back came a deceptive heart four, to West’s 10 and dummy’s king. Declarer could now have run the heart seven, playing East for a four-card suit. But West was perfectly capable of contributing the 10 from the 109. So eventually South played a heart to his ace, then guessed poorly by leading a diamond to the king and ace. Down one.

The diamond guess was unlucky, but declarer had missed a 100 percent line. After drawing trumps and eliminating clubs, he was right to play on hearts. But he should have covered the three with the seven to endplay East.

If a heart is returned, dummy’s jack and king can be cashed, and South re-enters his hand with a trump to discard a diamond on the heart ace. If West puts up the heart 10 at his first turn, dummy’s jack is played, and East is again forced to clear up the heart position.

This month, I’ll be running a few more deals from Kit Woolsey’s excellent new book, “The Language of Bridge.” Woolsey’s book focuses on one of the most difficult areas of the game, communication between partners.

Almost all books for beginners and intermediates focus on the problem faced by the individual. But really, it is only declarer play that is an individual sport. Both bidding and defense do sometimes involve unilateral decisions, but more often, the partnership must make the decision together. Knowing when to help partner decide what to do, and when to make the decision single-handedly, is one of the great challenges of the game. Here, for example, you defend against four spades after your partner has opened a weak two-bid in hearts. You lead the heart ace and get to see dummy. When partner encourages with the 10, you have to plan the defense.

Partner is encouraging in hearts, but do you know what four tricks you will take to defeat the contract? The answer is that you must first cash your diamond ace. Then, even if partner encourages in diamonds (which he will do if he has the diamond king), you now play another heart. This sequence of plays should make it clear to partner — you hope — that you want a third round of hearts for a trump promotion. If you had not cashed your diamond ace, partner might have played a third round of hearts prematurely, allowing declarer to discard his singleton diamond and avoid the trump loser.

Even if playing a 16-18 no-trump, many Norths would choose that opening call — inflation has set in at bridge as in all walks of life. Regardless, North-South will end up in three no-trump; but, as if to justify the upgrade, West holds a natural spade lead, and that puts the game in jeopardy.

Should South win or duck the opening lead? If he ducks, West continues with the spade jack, and declarer wins in dummy with the king. Declarer now leads a low diamond from dummy; when East takes his ace, he has no spade left to play, and whatever he shifts to will not cause declarer a problem. East will most probably try a heart. Declarer can win in his hand and knock out the diamond king, and can then easily win the rest of the tricks. (For the record, though, if spades had broken 4-3, the defenders could have scored only two tricks from each of the spade and diamond suits.)

There would have been a completely different outcome if declarer had taken the first spade trick. East would win the first diamond and would be able to lead his remaining spade. It would then be too late for declarer to hold up, for West would be able to win the second round of spades and continue with a third round. No matter what declarer did, West would set up the spades and regain the lead with the diamond king to cash out his spades and defeat the contract.

They say that the looker-on sees most of the game. As a kibitzer at my club, I often wonder whether the players consider the consequences of their actions. All too often, the board is completed and the players move on, blithely unaware of the opportunities missed and chances gone begging.

Today’s deal saw me as North, dummy, with the sort of hand that Terence Reese would have described as a king better than his usual rubber bridge collection. I transferred my partner into two spades, and West hit on the lead of the diamond seven, rather than the club eight. (The latter would have been my choice, if only because it might have been a little easier to read).

East won the diamond king and ace and pressed on with the diamond 10 — the best defense, though she announced afterward that she thought she was defending no-trump. South ruffed with the spade queen, and West over-ruffed and cashed the heart ace, then led a club. Declarer carefully won that in dummy to lead a spade toward the 10, and could no longer be prevented from making eight tricks.

As usual, no one said anything germane to best play and defense in the post mortem. My partner had played it nicely, but how would you comment on the defense?

West missed a trick when he over-ruffed the spade queen; if he had pitched a club, he could ensure that he either would get a club ruff or could ruff the fourth diamond with the spade nine once declarer was out of trumps.

On this deal from the second qualifying session of the Mitchell Open Board-a-Match Teams from the last national championships in Seattle, imagine that you have reached three no-trump, after both you and your vulnerable opponents have done a lot of bidding.

The heart queen held the trick on opening lead. A second heart to the ace was followed by a third heart, on which South had to discard from dummy. Name your poison!

At the table, declarer erred in practice — and maybe in theory as well — by pitching a spade. He then crossed to the club king to play a diamond to the ace in an attempt to keep West off lead while setting up diamonds. (The first diamond play had to come from dummy; if East had a doubleton queen or a holding such as J-9, he could defeat the game by unblocking his honor if declarer led low to the diamond king.)

The 4-1 break — disappointing, but hardly surprising — brought South up short. The best he could do was finesse in spades against East and hope for the clubs to break. That failed, but if declarer had pitched a club from dummy at trick three, then when the diamond break came to light, he could have crossed to the club ace and finessed in spades, then cashed the spade king.

At this point, he could have endplayed East by leading the king and a second club to force a spade play into dummy’s A-10 at the end for the ninth trick.

The response of two no-trump to one of a major can sensibly be played as game forcing with a fit. Opener shows his shortage if any, jumps with a good second suit, or signs off in four of a major with a minimum and no shortage.

After you jump to four spades at your second turn, you must plan the play on the lead of the heart queen. A good plan is to take two club finesses, but that will fail today.

A better idea is to win the first heart in hand, then draw trumps ending in hand and continue with a low diamond. If West follows with a low card, you will insert the 10. Here, East will win the queen and return a heart. You will win the heart king and ruff a heart. The sure trick line now is to play the ace and another diamond. West can win, but can then do no better than exit with a club. You play low from dummy, and East wins the trick and is endplayed either to lead clubs or give you a ruff-sluff.

What happens if West plays the diamond jack at trick four? You should take the trick with the diamond ace, then cash the heart king and ruff dummy’s last heart. You next lead another low diamond from hand, and the defense will be done for. West can rise with the king and play a club, which you will duck in dummy. After East wins that trick, he can do no better than cash the diamond queen, but at that point he must concede the rest.

South was all set to become declarer at two spades when West girded up his loins and produced a balancing double, pushing his opponents up to three spades.

When West led the heart four, declarer wisely played low from dummy, reasoning that an underlead of the ace was highly unlikely. When East won and returned the club nine, South played the king, and West took his ace and exited passively with a heart.

South now tackled trumps by leading his seven to dummy’s king (in case West had a singleton honor) and was happy to see trumps break. He went back to dummy with the spade eight to the nine, to advance the diamond jack. East now saw the necessity to hop up with his ace and play a second club. Had declarer finessed, West would have won and exited in clubs; but South divined the position accurately. He won his club queen and played a third club, forcing West to win and lead diamonds for him.

Had East ducked his diamond ace, the defenders would have been unable to establish their second club trick in time; but in fact the defenders had already missed their best chance to set the contract. West had to duck the first club, leaving communications intact for the defenders. When East gets in with the diamond ace, a second club dooms the contract.

Ducking the first club to preserve communications is an important point of technique, but making the play in good tempo requires both skill and experience!

The easiest way to score tricks is with honor cards and long suits. But sometimes the spot-cards can be critical, as is the case today.

When North opened the bidding with one diamond, South responded one no-trump. North overbid slightly, perhaps, when he jumped to game, but if he had invited game, South would have accepted happily enough.

West led the heart two, and declarer rightly inserted the jack, in case West had underled the king and queen. He ducked the king and the heart continuation, but won the third heart, discarding a club from dummy. South could count on eight tricks, with the diamond suit his only chance for a ninth.

He opted for the simple route of four rounds of clubs followed by the three top diamonds, but when the diamonds failed to break, he had to concede defeat.

The same contract was reached at another table. Here, South won the third round of hearts and also discarded a club from dummy. But this declarer saw the additional chance from his diamond intermediates. So, at trick four, he played the diamond eight to the ace and followed with the diamond king, observing East’s jack with interest, and being careful to unblock his own diamond nine.

Next came four rounds of clubs, and when West showed out on the third, the combination of the fourth-highest lead, the count in clubs and the fall of the diamond jack persuaded declarer to finesse dummy’s diamond seven to land his game.