The 2017 Yeh Bros Cup threw up this intriguing four-heart game. At one table, Karen McCallum chose a good moment for an aggressive pre-empt when she opened three spades. North, Deng Zhuodi, also did well when he elected to double on a slightly flawed hand. This had the effect of getting his side to four hearts. After a spade lead, won in hand, declarer Yin Jiashen could see little prospect but to eliminate diamonds.

When Cenk Tuncok, as East, won his diamond ace and returned the suit, the fall of the jack let Jiashen win, then guess the trump queen and draw trumps in two rounds. Next, declarer pitched a spade on the diamond 10 and finessed clubs, with East becoming endplayed upon winning that trick. He could either lead a club into the tenace or give a ruff-sluff, letting declarer ruff in hand and pitch another spade from dummy.

In the other room, Jing Liu led a top spade. Declarer Sally Brock won and played a diamond, and Yingbao Liu found a more challenging defense when he ducked this trick but won the next, returning a diamond to let West ruff in and kill the discard. However, this simplified the trump position; declarer over-ruffed West, drew trumps in two rounds and passed the club 10 for the same endplay. When a diamond came back, Brock could pitch a spade from hand and ruff in dummy, and her hand was now high, apart from her spade loser.

No swing, and nicely done.

This month, I’ll be running a selection of deals from “The Language of Bridge” by Kit Woolsey. This is a book I can recommend to all my readers because it covers territory that most bridge books do not focus on. It discusses how a partnership should work together rather than giving the reader a problem that he needs to solve on his own.

The book is both about bidding and play, and over the next eight weeks I will examine a series of defensive problems that address how defensive signaling works, and when one defender can take charge as opposed to consulting his partner.

For example, take the East cards, defending against four spades on the lead of the heart king. You can immediately identify what the winning defense should be. Get West to play a diamond at trick two, then win your spade ace, put partner in with the second round of hearts, and obtain a diamond ruff. How do you persuade your partner to find the right play? Answer: you don’t!

There is no way (short of an extensive course in semaphore) that you can describe your hand to your partner. Since he won’t be able to figure it out for himself, it is up to you to do the heavy lifting. Do the hard work yourself by overtaking his heart king and shifting to a diamond. When you take the first trump and lead a second heart, you hope your partner will manage to work out the winning defense.

One of the secrets of declaring at bridge is to identify which of your opponents is the danger hand, and to take steps where possible to keep that player off lead. An example is today’s deal, where the contract of four hearts is touch-and-go. The contract should always succeed if the spade finesse works, but what if it does not?

If West makes the normal opening lead of the club queen, declarer should let the queen hold. Since he has to lose a club and probably a diamond, he must direct his attentions toward not losing more than one spade.

There is a chance of developing dummy’s long diamond, but it must be by a duck into the non-danger hand, West. Meanwhile, declarer must keep East off lead, since a spade lead through South would be fatal if West has the ace. To cover all the bases, declarer wins the second club and draws trumps in two rounds. Then he eliminates the clubs and leads the diamond king, following up with a diamond to the 10.

This line succeeds when West had one diamond honor in either a two- or three-card suit. The reason is that if West has no diamonds left to lead, he must play a black suit and allow declarer to hold his spade losers to one. If West started with three diamonds, declarer will obtain his discard in due course. Likewise, if West began with four diamonds and can exit with a diamond, declarer will cross to dummy’s trump and fall back on the spade finesse.

Weak two-suited opening bids can mess up the opponents, but they can also backfire horribly. Witness today’s deal from the Yeh Bros Cup.

Four hearts is impossible for North-South to make here, but it would have been easy to get rich by defending three diamonds doubled. However, against Liu Jun’s three-no-trump contract, Ian Robinson led the diamond seven to Arjun Delivera’s nine. Jun won and played on clubs. East ducked the first club, then won the next.

Back came a low diamond rather than the jack; declarer made a good guess and won in hand, cashed his spade and heart winners, and presented East with a diamond. Delivera could cash three diamonds, but then had to concede the last three clubs to dummy.

East should have unblocked both the diamond nine and jack early, in which case West would have had the option to win the third round of diamonds with the six.

Now declarer is threatened with five top losers if he surrenders a heart while the defenders still have communications in diamonds. But he should be able to spot the play of advancing the heart queen, hoping for a bare jack or nine with East. When he gets lucky, he can cash one club if he wants, pitching a heart, on which West can discard either a heart or a spade.

However, now declarer comes to hand with the second spade and exits with a diamond. If East wins, he must surrender the game-going tricks in clubs. If West wins, he has a spade to cash, but he can’t take more than one heart trick.

Today’s deal saw West get off to an unfortunate lead against three no-trump, requiring some nice defense from East to defeat the game.

When North raised South’s two-no-trump opening to game, West might have led a heart, but he reasonably opted for the more passive choice of the diamond eight. There is no real likelihood that hearts will be more fertile ground than diamonds, and leading from honor-fourth into a strong hand is more likely to cost a trick than strike gold.

When declarer played low from dummy at trick one, East refrained from contributing the queen. His logic was that he wanted to minimize the later entries to dummy in diamonds by preserving his honor over dummy’s holding.

When South won the first trick with his jack and advanced the club queen, East made his second good play by ducking. Had he won, South would have been able to drive out the club ace, with the diamond entry to dummy remaining in place. As it was, when South played a second club, East won and shifted to spades (again, a diamond would have allowed declarer to create an extra entry to dummy and set up the clubs). When West won his spade jack and reverted to diamonds, declarer put in the 10, but East covered, and declarer now had no chance but to rely on spades breaking.

When that suit split 4-2, he could take no more than three diamonds, one club and two tricks in each major.

In today’s deal, South’s four-club call shows a decent five-card suit. Thereafter, cue-bidding sees North use Key-card Blackwood and drive to slam. West leads the diamond king; after winning with the diamond ace and seeing East follow, how do you plan to make another 11 tricks for the contract?

If spades break no worse than 3-1, you can draw trumps and run the clubs, discarding diamonds from dummy. If trumps are 2-2, you will make an overtrick by ruffing two diamonds in dummy. By contrast, if East has four trumps, the contract looks almost impossible to make.

However, when it is West who has four trumps, you need to be very careful. In that scenario, with the cards as shown, the only way to make the contract is to ruff a heart at trick two. Not until then can you play the trump ace.

When East discards, you continue with a low trump and cover West’s card in dummy. After ruffing a second heart with the queen, you will lead the trump seven and again cover West’s card. After drawing the last trump and throwing a diamond from hand, you will have taken the first seven tricks. At this point, the clubs will provide the five tricks you need to make the contract.

Note that if you played a trump to the ace at trick two, the contract fails because dummy is an entry short for the two heart ruffs you need as the cards lie.

When you pick up an 11-count with honors in your long suits, it presents the dilemma of whether to pass or to open.

Today’s deal comes from a recent Australian event, and it illustrates the advantage of getting busy in the bidding at an early stage. Opening can backfire if your partner takes you too seriously or if the opponents buy the contract. But sometimes by not opening, your partnership can be effectively shut out of the auction. Let’s look at what happened at two tables.

In one room, Tony Burke sat North. He judged well to sacrifice in four spades when his partner had passed over four hearts — you can judge for yourself whether South’s decision was well conceived. Four spades went one down, while East/West could have made four hearts without a problem, losing just two diamonds and a trump.

By contrast, at the table where East passed, Tony Nunn — one of Australia’s most talented players — opened the South hand two spades, and North raised to game, thereby winning the battle. But could he win the war?

Four spades seems to be one top trick short, but Nunn pulled off a bit of daylight robbery. He won the diamond lead in dummy, then led the club queen to the two, nine and ace. After winning the diamond return in dummy, Nunn led the club three. An unsuspecting East played low since, after all, Nunn’s nine had all the hallmarks of a singleton — and the six won the trick!

When South hears his partner open then raise spades, it suggests a minimum hand, typically with four trumps. So South decides that jumping directly to small slam is more likely to attract a favorable lead than result in missing a playable grand slam.

West has a natural diamond lead; declarer wins the ace and takes the trump finesse. When West wins the king and leads another diamond, the slam now depends on not losing a heart trick. South can simply try to guess which opponent has the heart queen, but one should try to postpone a decision of this kind until the last possible moment.

The idea is to play on side suits first in the hope of finding out something about the distribution. Sometimes one cannot discover anything useful, but it should cost nothing to try.

Accordingly, South uses dummy’s trump entry to ruff dummy’s last diamond, then plays three rounds of clubs. He is rewarded when West discards a diamond on the third round of that suit. At this point, declarer knows that East started with precisely six clubs and two spades. Since East has followed three times in diamonds, East could not have started with more than two hearts. If East began with more than three diamonds, he has room in his hand for at most one heart.

Whatever the case, South knows West has more hearts than East. Thus the odds are that West has the heart queen, so he finesses through West in hearts. When the finesse succeeds, the slam comes home.

When North raises South’s opening bid of one spade to two, South knows that slam is highly unlikely, but there is bound to be at least decent play for game. So South just ups and bids game in spades, and then must try to make it on the lead of the heart king.

South should expect to lose a heart and a diamond, so must hold his club losers to one. It may look natural to go after diamonds, but that would be a mistake; if the defenders can dislodge the only sure entry to dummy, declarer may not be able to maximize his play in clubs.

Instead, South wins the heart ace and draws three rounds of trumps. He must then resist the temptation to exit passively in hearts; again, the defenders might go after declarer’s diamond entry to dummy before declarer is ready for this to happen.

Instead, South leads a low club towards dummy’s queen, hoping West holds the king. If so, declarer’s queen and ace of clubs will take tricks, and he can trump his last club in dummy if necessary. But East takes dummy’s queen with his ace and returns a heart to his partner’s queen, and West now shifts to a diamond to East’s ace. East returns a second diamond, and dummy wins with the king.

The time has come to try the second finesse in clubs. Declarer leads a low club from dummy and puts in the 10 from his own hand. When it holds the trick, South can cash the club ace and ruff his last club with dummy’s remaining trump.