Today’s deal might make you instinctively smell a rat when you are given the North-South hands and told to make six hearts. Since there appear to be 12 tricks on top if the diamonds break, you should immediately assume that the suit will not behave. The likelihood of the bad break is, of course, increased by the opponents pre-empting against you.

But try to take a less cynical approach and construct a line of play that allows you to make against both normal and abnormal breaks.

After the lead of the spade king to the ace, it seems normal to draw trumps. You lead a heart to the ace, and when both opponents follow, you ruff a spade high and draw a second and third trump. Now come the three top clubs, ending in dummy, and when West follows suit each time, you can be confident he has at most two diamonds; but what if he has a singleton? If that is so, you can cover some but not all of the bases by leading a low diamond from dummy and playing small from hand whatever East does. As the cards lie, if he plays an honor, he is immediately endplayed, while if he plays low, it is West who will win and be endplayed.

Note that West must take the blame for this defensive debacle — not because he didn’t lead a diamond himself, but because he did not discard his diamond nine on the second or third trump. Had he done so, East’s diamonds are good enough to avoid the endplay.

At the European Open Championships in Poznan, Poland, Sjoert Brink and Bas Drijver of the Netherlands continued to make the case that they are amongst the world’s top partnerships. They shone in both the bidding and the play in this deal.

The partnership plays the four-diamond response to one club to show long hearts, better than an immediate jump to game, so South, Drijver, took control and drove to slam after using Key-card Blackwood.

Drijver had arranged to conceal his diamond shortage from the defenders. So when Jean-Christophe Quantin led the diamond 10 to his partner’s king, Marc Bompis continued the attack on diamonds. Of course, with the South hand on view, it would have been easier to find the club switch, which breaks up any pressure in the endgame.

Drijver ruffed the second diamond and ran all but one of his hearts, pitching all his small clubs. He reduced down to four spades and the club ace in hand, and two spades, two clubs and a trump in dummy.

When the trump eight was led, East pitched a club, as did South. West decided to hold on to his spades; otherwise, declarer would ruff the fourth spade high with the club ace as an entry. So West bared his club king, but Drijver read the position and crossed to the club ace, scoring dummy’s club nine as the twelfth trick.

Incidentally, the reason Drijver rejected the club finesse and played for the crisscross squeeze was that East was a passed hand who had already shown eight points in diamonds.

Today’s deal comes from the Common Game, which allows identical deals to be played all over the U.S. at roughly the same time, thus allowing large numbers of players to compare how well or badly they have done with the same cards.

This deal is a declarer play problem in four spades that features a small point of judgment as opposed to system. You reach four spades here after a two no-trump opener when North uses Stayman rather than a transfer. Yes, either route would have led to the same contract, but the point is: Do you really want to play a 5-3 spade fit here as North? I’d say no, but if you transfer, that is surely what you will achieve. Anyway, South must plan the play in four spades on the lead of the heart queen.

The key here is to duck the opening lead, to try to keep East off lead, then win the second heart and draw trumps by playing the ace and king, hoping they split 2-2. But even when they do not, you can improve on the simple chance of the diamond finesse by stripping off the clubs and playing a third heart.

When, as here, East began with the doubleton heart king, West will be thrown in with the heart, either to give you a ruff-sluff or to play diamonds for you by leading away from his king. And, of course, if East ruffs his partner’s winner to lead diamonds, he is combining his side’s winners on the same trick, so the contract will still come home.

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.