When South opens one no-trump, North uses Stayman and sets the contract in four hearts. On the lead of the club queen, East flies up with the ace and continues the suit. Declarer wins the king and has to decide on a plan. What would you do in his position?

You appear to have a loser in each red suit and two in clubs. How are you going to reduce four losers to three? Your best bet appears to be the spade finesse. After winning the club king, cross to the diamond ace and take the spade finesse. If it loses, you may go two down in your game, but this is a risk you should be prepared to take. When the finesse wins, you unblock spades, cross to the heart king, pitch your club loser on the spades and lead a second trump. If East follows low, you can afford the safety play of the finesse, since if this loses to the queen or jack, you can regain the lead and draw the last trump. If East splits his honors, you win the ace and play the king and another diamond, and the defenders score only one diamond and one trump trick.

Well played, but have you noticed an unusual resource available to the defense? If East ducks his club ace at the first trick, the defenders retain the upper hand. If declarer embarks on the same line as above, East still has an entry to keep South from scoring his trumps separately. No matter what declarer tries, the defense has a countermeasure.

Andrew Robson’s latest book, “Counting and Card Placement,” deals with many critical aspects of card play. As Robson says, tallying your quick and slow losers can be essential in determining the best line of play. For example, plan the play in four spades here, on the lead of the diamond queen.

While you have four spade, two heart, two diamond and two club winners, the problem is that you may also have four losers. (Effectively, you will take the tenth and last of your winners at trick 14!)

Say you win the first diamond and lead a spade. The opponents will win the ace and lead a second diamond. You will win the ace and draw trump to lead a heart. But the opponents can win and cash their third-round diamond winner, plus the club ace, for down one.

Agreed, you have to lose the three aces, but you can do something about that pesky slow diamond loser. It can be discarded on a heart, but you must set up the discard quickly — leading a trump loses a vital tempo. Instead, you must lead the heart at trick two.

There is a final wrinkle. If you win the diamond king at trick one to lead to the diamond queen, the defenders can duck, win the second heart and lead a second diamond. You will then have no way back to hand to cash the third heart and eliminate the diamond loser. Instead, win trick one with the diamond ace, then set up hearts, with the diamond re-entry to hand still in place.

In the Grand National Open Teams at the New South Wales Bridge Association, two strong Australian teams met, and both declarers passed the test they were set.

Against four spades, West led the heart king, then the queen, which East overtook. He returned a club, won in hand by declarer, Andrew Peake. Then came the spade two. West inserted the 10, and East showed out when the ace was played from dummy. Peake now played a diamond to the king, then the 10, covered with the jack and ace, then a further diamond was ruffed in hand. A club to the queen followed, then a second diamond was ruffed.

South cashed the club king, on which dummy’s last diamond departed. He continued with his low club, and with nothing but trumps left, West could make just one further trick.

Incidentally, had East followed to the third diamond, declarer would have played four rounds of clubs, ruffing in dummy, then ruffed a diamond with an intermediate trump to achieve the same ending.

The same line was taken by Paul Gosney at the second table, which was even more impressive, since he wasn’t doubled.

A better defense would have been for East to lead a third heart at trick three. When declarer ruffs in hand and West pitches a club, declarer will have to take care not to play trump at all. Instead, he strips off two clubs and four diamonds, and in the four-card ending leads a club from hand, under-ruffing West’s trump honor and endplaying him to concede the rest.

This column has recently reported back on the exploits of Goldilocks and the Three Bears at the Ursine Bridge Club. Today’s deal saw Goldilocks toiling over the repair of a broken chair at home, when the Bears returned from their foray into duplicate. It didn’t take long before Papa Bear prepared to regale her with his performance on this challenging deal.

On the auction shown, Papa had reached six no-trump, a contract that appears to depend on the play in the heart suit. When asked what line he had followed, Papa revealed that he had cashed the king and led up to dummy. When only small cards appeared, he worked out that the only doubleton that would help him was the doubleton nine in East, so he put up the 10 and lived happily ever after.

“You were lucky,” remarked Mama Bear bitterly. “I also played six no-trump and won the spade lead to play a heart toward my king. When East put up the nine, I now had the losing option of playing East for a doubleton jack-nine or queen-nine. I misguessed and went down a trick.”

Baby Bear had seemed close to exploding but was finally allowed to get a word in edgewise. “I didn’t have to guess hearts,” he remarked. When asked to explain, he said that his partner as South had bid four spades over four diamonds, agreeing diamonds, and that led to a contract of seven diamonds. Even after a trump lead, it was easy to ruff out the hearts and take 13 tricks without any problems.

Today’s deal comes from a bridge magazine and was created more than 60 years ago. Put yourself in South’s seat and see if you can find a way to conjure up a 12th trick from the remarkably few straws that can be put together to make a brick.

You declare six no-trump on the lead of the club jack and can see at once that you have 12 easy tricks if diamonds break. Your best subsidiary chance comes at trick one: If East wastes his ace, you will have a finesse position in clubs to allow you to come home. But no, East thoughtfully plays low, and you win your club king. You then cash the diamond ace to get the bad news. Are you going to take your ball and go home?

The winning line requires a misdefense, but when you see it, you might ask yourself if you would have fallen for it. You cross to a spade in dummy and advance the heart jack. When East covers — wouldn’t you? — you win, unblock your last heart winner and run the spades.

You reduce to a four-card ending where West needs to keep his heart 10 and three diamonds, or concede at once. You exit with a heart, and West must win, only to be endplayed into giving you the three diamond tricks you need for your slam.

Because covering the heart jack with the king is probably right if declarer began with three hearts, it is hard to criticize East too much for failing to find the winning defense of ducking the heart jack.

This year marks the centenary of the birth of a bridge player who was better known as a prose writer, translator and mathematician. His name was Geza Ottlik, and he classified many hitherto unrecognized positions in bridge. “Adventures in Card Play” is one of bridge’s more fascinating and complex books.

Here is a deal he created for the Budapest 1977 Junior Camp. He called it “Find the Lad,” in contrast to “Find the Lady.”

Against four hearts, West leads the spade five, and East plays the queen. With inevitable spade and club losers, you would like to hold your trump losers to one. It helps to be a good guesser, but are there are any clues or other pieces of information you need to process?

If you go after trumps on your own, you will surely lose two tricks in the suit today. Instead, you should try to avoid guessing trumps altogether. If the club king is onside, you may not need to open up the trump suit at all.

Return a spade at trick two, win the diamond shift at trick three, then play the second top diamond and ruff a diamond with the heart seven. Next you ruff a spade, as East pitches a diamond, then you advance the club jack and run it if West does not cover. But let’s say he does cover: If so, you ruff yet another spade, cash your remaining club honor and cut loose with your last club. In the three-card ending with just trumps in both hands, the opponents must find the trump jack for you.

Today’s deal might appear straightforward at teams, but at matchpoints you can imagine there would be a temptation to put your contract at risk. Let’s look at teams play. You declare four hearts on the defense of repeated club leads. You ruff the second, and I assume you cash the heart ace, with both opponents following. What would you do now? No peeking at the opponents’ cards!

If trumps are 3-2, almost any approach will lead to 10 tricks. But today, if you cross to a top diamond and take the trump finesse, West will win his doubleton queen and lead a second diamond to give his partner a ruff.

So is the solution simply to cash both top trumps? Not at all, since your secondary concern should be managing a 4-1 trump break. If you take the two top trumps and find an opponent showing out, you cannot prevent the other opponent from scoring both his small trumps, and eventually a spade as well.

So after both opponents follow to the first trump, the best line is to play a low trump from hand at trick four!

The point is that when West wins, then even if trumps are 4-1, the best he can do is play a third round of clubs. But you can simply discard a spade from hand. You can then ruff a fourth round of clubs in dummy and cross to hand with a spade to draw the remaining trumps.

While the chance of each unfriendly lie of the cards is small, why not protect against both?

English expert Andrew Robson is not only a fine player, but he also runs a superb bridge club in London and has made a specialty of writing simple and informative bridge books. Over the next few months, I’ll be running a few deals from his latest themed collection, “Counting and Card Placement.” See www.baronbarclay.com/category/books.

In today’s example, you reach four spades after opening one spade in fourth seat. West leads the diamond king and continues with the queen, followed by the jack to East’s ace, which you ruff. What now?

The odds narrowly favor playing for the drop in trumps. But “eight ever, nine never” is a big overstatement. If you knew who held the heart ace, it might influence your decision.

It is time for a discovery play, so at trick four, you lead a heart to dummy’s king. Your rationale is that playing on hearts may tell you how to play spades. If dummy’s king wins the trick, you can be sure West holds the ace — but you can play a second heart, just in case East is very smart, or very stupid.

Once West has revealed an ace in addition to his diamond sequence, East is heavily favored to hold the spade queen, or West would have 12 points and would likely have opened the bidding. So play spades by cashing the king and leading to your jack.

Note that if East turns up with the heart ace, you are still on a spade guess. But the discovery play cost nothing.