This is another deal from Kit Woolsey’s excellent new book, “The Language of Bridge.”

As East, you see your partner lead the heart queen; how do you get him to do the right thing after that?

You know the correct defense is for partner to lead a diamond through dummy so that the defense can take their four red-suit tricks, assuming declarer has at least two cards in each red suit — if he doesn’t, you surely have no chance to set the game.

The problem is that a club shift may look more attractive to partner than a diamond shift. So you need to help partner with suit-preference signals.

The answer is to win the heart ace at trick one and return the heart nine. Partner will know that you have the heart king when declarer doesn’t win the second trick, and he will also know that you clearly want him to shift to a minor. Since you had the choice between the heart ace and the heart king at trick one, the combination of your play of the heart ace plus the nine should be suit preference for the higher suit, diamonds. As you can see, the diamond shift is necessary if declarer has the club king and is 2-2 in the minors.

Had you wanted a club shift (switch the diamond queen and club king), you would have taken the heart king at trick one and returned the heart two, again using suit preference to distinguish between the two minors.

It never ceases to amaze me that declarers so often rush the play in a grand slam. After all, if a grand slam isn’t worth thinking about for a few extra seconds, what contract will you consider worthy of reflection?

In today’s deal, an efficient bidding sequence led to seven spades, and West led a trump. Declarer reasoned that as long as clubs broke no worse than 4-2, he was home free. So he took the trump lead in dummy, played a diamond to the ace and ruffed a diamond on board. A heart to the ace was followed by the ruff of declarer’s last diamond with dummy’s final trump. Then came the club ace for a heart discard, which passed off peacefully, but when he continued with the club king, on which he threw the heart queen, West unkindly ruffed.

What South had not noticed was that he could have coped with the 5-1 club break. Although it is not strictly a dummy reversal, if declarer had used dummy’s high trumps for the purposes of drawing trumps and use South’s high trumps for ruffing, he could have found his way to 13 tricks without any real problem.

Win the trump lead in dummy and ruff a club high. Play a spade to dummy and ruff a second club high. A third spade to the table draws the last trump, and now the clubs are established, allowing all of South’s red-suit losers to be discarded. He ends up with four clubs, two aces and seven trump tricks.

Today’s deal produced a bizarre flat board in a teams game where both declarers played four spades. I’m fairly confident there were two rather relieved Souths.

In each room, West led the heart king, won by declarer’s ace. The first South ran the spade 10, which held the trick. Next came a spade to the queen and the ace, East pitching a heart. South now ran the diamond nine, and West won his queen and played the heart king. South ruffed this trick and tried to bring in the club suit, hoping for a 3-3 break. When his second chance failed, declarer had only eight tricks. In retrospect South was kicking himself; all he had to do was to discard on the heart king, and he would have had a sure route to 10 tricks.

In the other room, the lead and play to the first four tricks were identical. But at that table, West was a very tricky customer. When declarer passed the diamond nine, East gave count, and West realized that South was either 6-2 or 4-4 in the minors. Since he had no realistic chance to set the game in the second case, West decided to give declarer an additional losing option by winning the diamond ace at his first turn!

When West returned a heart, declarer did not see any danger; he ruffed in hand, crossed to a top club, then finessed in diamonds and went down the same humiliating two tricks as had happened in the other room.

When South heard his partner invite slam, his call of five no-trump was intended to offer a choice of slams. Even at matchpoint pairs, maybe North should have bid six clubs to look for a 4-4 minor-suit fit. That contract would be easy to bring home today, but North was worried that facing king-jack-third or king-queen-third of spades, six clubs would go down on a spade ruff, so the inferior slam was reached.

After a spade lead to East’s jack, South had to recover from his partner’s indelicate bidding. He ducked the spade lead and won the next, then played three rounds of clubs, leaving himself an entry to his hand in that suit. Next came the three top diamonds, and when East followed to all six of those leads, that player was marked with a singleton heart.

So South cashed the heart queen and led the nine from hand. When West followed small (knowing if he covered that declarer would have crossed back to hand by leading to his club winner, then taken the heart finesse on the third round), South let the nine run and claimed his contract.

For the record, even if the count had not produced such a definitive answer (say, if East appeared to have a doubleton heart), it would be right to lead the nine to the king, then cross back to the heart queen and finesse if East had produced the jack or 10 on the second round of the suit.

Today’s deal shows a technique of declarer play that everyone should have at their disposal.

When the heart king is led against five clubs, South wins the trick and plans how to develop diamonds to maximum efficiency.

Declarer sees that he must establish the suit without losing out to a ruff or over-ruff. If the adverse diamonds split 3-3, one ruff will establish the suit, and it will be smooth sailing. The major worry is a diamond split of 4-2 or worse, with possible over-ruffs of dummy to contend with. The first issue is how many rounds of trumps to draw. Since the likelihood on this auction that anyone has one diamond and two or fewer trumps is nonexistent, it seems wise to go after diamonds relatively early.

Happily, declarer can play the diamonds so as to need only one ruff in dummy, allowing him to negotiate any 4-2 split. The first move is to lead a low trump, won by South, to be sure that the trumps do not split 4-0. Declarer then cashes the diamond king and ace, and leads a third round of the suit. If West discards or ruffs in, the cross-ruff is assured. If West produces the queen, South can ruff high and draw trumps, but when West follows with the diamond 10, it is essential today to discard the losing heart from dummy.

As the cards lie, West can do no better than return a heart; declarer ruffs low in dummy, gives up a spade, then ruffs the fourth diamond high in dummy, and claims the rest.

Today’s hand came up in the second International Olympic Committee Grand Prix, which was held in the Olympic Museum in Lausanne, Switzerland, in 1999.

Contradictory as it may sound, it may become necessary to finesse for the trump queen in both directions in order to retain control. In certain circles this is known as the Anne Gallagher finesse.

Try the play as South, declarer in four spades, on the lead of a small heart to the ace, followed by the return of the jack, which holds the trick. Now comes yet another heart. You ruff in dummy, of course, but what next?

If you play the ace and king of spades, the 4-1 break means that you lose control — you are unable to complete the drawing of trumps without being forced. One declarer cashed the trump ace, and when he played a trump to the jack, West thoughtfully let it hold. The end result was down three, since West could now kill the diamond suit.

Instead, at trick four try a small trump from dummy and finesse the nine or jack. Should West win, you are in control on any return. On a club or heart return, you can safely trump in dummy, cash the spade ace, then enter hand with the diamond ace to draw the remaining trumps before running the diamonds.

Should West not take his spade queen, you must find the counterintuitive move of finessing in trumps the other way. When the 10 holds, cash the ace, enter hand with the diamond ace, draw the last trump and run the diamonds, for 11 tricks.

Today’s deal comes from “The Language of Bridge” by Kit Woolsey. The author framed it as a defensive problem: I’m going to give you a slightly different take on the deal by asking you just to look at the East cards, not the West cards, as Woolsey posed.

After an abortive Stayman sequence, your partner leads a fourth-highest spade four. You win the spade jack as declarer plays the spade six. Under your spade queen, declarer plays the spade eight, partner the seven. What should you do, and why?

Clearly declarer started with precisely A-8-6 of spades, since he denied a four-card major. If your partner had started with ace-king-fifth of spades, he would have overtaken the queen and cashed out the spades.

Also, if he had wanted spades continued, he would have seized control by overtaking the second spade and leading a third spade. When he didn’t do this, he must have wanted to leave you on lead to do something else.

Since we know West began with K-10-7-4-2, he had three small spades to choose from at trick two. Playing the seven, the middle spade out of these three spots, should call for the middle suit, diamonds. Your partner must have three decent diamonds and be hoping you can lead the suit, and that you have the 10 or that declarer has only two diamonds.

If you shift to a diamond now, then when you get back on lead with the club king, another diamond play will give the defense five tricks.

Today’s deal saw a relatively experienced declarer missing his best chance in three no-trump. He ducked the opening diamond lead and won the next diamond in hand, then took a spade finesse and found that when East won and returned the suit, the defenders could get spades going before he could find a ninth trick.

Ducking the first diamond looks right, since there is no shift you fear. But next win the diamond king and lead a low heart from dummy, planning to duck if East follows low in unconcerned fashion. West will win his 10 and clear diamonds; you win in hand and cross to the heart ace to lead a heart toward your hand.

The advantage of playing on hearts before spades is that this line lets you fall back on the spade finesse as a last resort; the defenders surely cannot take more than two tricks in either red suit. However there are plenty of lies of the cards where an unsuccessful spade finesse will set up an extra winner for the defense, which prevents you from playing effectively on the red suits.

One of the most important strategies as declarer is to take your chances in the right order. If the spade finesse is working at the start of the hand, it will still be working at the end of the hand. But when you have to duck tricks in side suits in order to test them to maximum efficiency, you generally need to make those plays earlier rather than later.