Today’s auction was straightforward enough, with North deciding not to beat around the bush with a cue-bid en route to what he thought was his side’s best contract. As you can see, three no-trump by North can be defeated on a club lead, but perhaps a less precipitate route would have left open the option to play that game if appropriate.

Be that as it may, West led a heart against four spades. Declarer saw two possible losers in clubs and one each in diamonds and spades. The bidding marked West with very little, but as long as he held either the diamond king or club ace, the contract seemed safe. Similarly, if East held the spade king, all would be well.

Problems would only materialize if West held the spade king and reasoned (as he surely would) that he should win and push a club through dummy’s tenace. Having worked all of this out, South realized he could take advantage of the fact that West couldn’t see East’s cards.

So declarer won the opening lead in hand and followed with the spade queen. Now consider West’s problem: It looked for all the world as if East had the trump ace, and based on the bidding, that card would surely be bare. So he played low, and the queen won. After playing off the spade ace, declarer followed up with a diamond finesse. East took his king and returned a heart. But now South could pitch his losing clubs on dummy’s diamonds. West could ruff the fourth with his master trump, but by now it was too late.

One of my readers, Jacques Guertin, sent me this deal, which I pass on to you with a couple of edits.

Let’s consider the defense against three hearts, after South has shown hearts and a minor and your partner has led the club 10. Your queen forces the ace, and declarer plays the ace and a second trump. You cash the club king, giving partner a club ruff. You take your two diamonds for one down … and then you wake up!

Your partner has competed to the three-level based on very little. He surely has a six-card diamond suit. Even if South hadn’t shown his clubs, the odds would have favored your partner having a singleton club 10 rather than a doubleton. Since West cannot have much in terms of high cards, he’d need some distribution to justify competing to three diamonds. The singleton club would be the most likely explanation.

So the key to the defense is not to waste a club honor at trick one. Play low and let South win the jack, then take the second heart and put the club king through declarer, ensuring two clubs tricks and a ruff plus one trick in each red suit, for down one.

This defense, of not collapsing your honors and your partner’s into a single trick, is one that you need to have in your repertoire. It often applies when your partner leads a queen or jack, which might be either a singleton or doubleton. Your defensive strategy may vary depending on whether you have side entries or need to take the ruff to set your opponents’ contract.

South’s opening bid of two clubs followed by a rebid of two no-trump shows 22-24 points, and it would be cowardly of North to bid less than seven no-trump. South needs all four diamond tricks to make his contract, so he must play on the side suits to get a count.

He can discover that West started with three clubs, as West discards a spade on the fourth club while East pitches two spades.

South next runs the hearts. When East drops the heart 10 on the third round, even though this may be a false card, it appears that West started with four hearts and East with only three.

South now leads his second spade, and both opponents follow. Since neither the 10 nor the nine has yet appeared, South should assume that West has the 10 for his opening lead. While it is possible that West began with a short holding including both the jack and 10, it is far more likely that he has length than shortage. Since the 10 has not appeared, he must have begun with at least four spades.

Let’s do the math: West started with at least four spades, at least three hearts and exactly three clubs. At most, therefore, West started with only three diamonds; he might have had only one, but never four.

So South takes the first two diamonds with dummy’s top cards. The distribution of the diamonds is revealed when West shows out at the 11th trick, allowing South to take the marked finesse at trick 12, to bring home his grand slam.

At the Dyspeptics Club, South may enjoy the luck of the cards, but he normally manages to find a way to make up for it in the play. On occasion, though, he does achieve a coup — not by employing masterful technique, but with his lucky rabbit’s foot.

Here, when South heard his partner respond one spade, instead of raising to three spades, he allowed his balanced shape to tempt him into a rebid of two no-trump. When North raised to three no-trump, South decided to pass rather than convert to four spades — a fortunate decision today.

Against three no-trump, West led the club five, and declarer won cheaply in hand. Now South could sensibly have played on either red suit. Instead, though, declarer cashed three top spades, then got off lead with the ace and another club. West won and started to cash his clubs.

You can see the effect — while North parted with two hearts, South could throw a spade and a heart. Then West would be stuck on lead, and would either have to concede a trick to the heart king or solve declarer’s problems in diamonds.

Alas, South ruined a good story by claiming to have won the fourth round of clubs with his small spade in hand. It emerged that South was trying to declare four spades, and it was only inadvertently that he had found the perfect play to ensure nine tricks in no-trump. It is sometimes better to be lucky than good, I suppose.

On this deal from the 1998 Life Master Pairs, there were two fine plays on the same deal. One play was by a defender, and one by declarer. Let’s start with the defense.

Against four spades, Jeff Aker as West led the heart jack to declarer’s queen. South played a diamond to the ace and East’s 10, then drew two rounds of trumps. Now came three top clubs, throwing a heart from dummy, followed by a low diamond from hand. Aker rose with the king, swallowing up his partner’s queen, a Crocodile Coup. He cashed his diamond, then played a heart to his partner’s ace for down one. Declarer’s line required a defensive error or a seriously blocked diamond suit, but could he have done better?

At another table, Susan Wexler also declared four spades, on the lead of the heart jack. She won her queen and advanced a low diamond, ducking in dummy when West followed small. She won the club return, took her diamond ace, then cashed the top trumps and her two club winners, to throw a heart from dummy. Now when she exited with the heart king, both declarer and dummy had only spades and diamonds left, and East was on lead with only hearts and clubs to lead. Regardless of he did, declarer could ruff the return in dummy and throw away her losing diamond from hand.

This is an incomplete elimination. The defenders have a winning diamond and a trump left, with declarer needing to find West rather than East with both key-cards.

One of the partnerships that dominated the pairs scene in the U.S. for over a decade was David Berkowitz and Larry Cohen. On this hand from the early rounds of the Spingold, David Berkowitz as West had to work out what his partner was showing, and then try to decide where to go from there. If you cover up the East and South hands, you can put yourself in his seat.

When Berkowitz led a top diamond against four hearts, his partner’s diamond five was encouraging (consistent with a doubleton or the queen). Giving his partner a ruff was one possible defense — but on the auction declarer was far more likely to have only two diamonds than three. If his partner had three diamonds to the queen, Berkowitz could see three tricks for the defense, but the danger of a minor-suit squeeze loomed large. Imagine that you cash the ace and another diamond; declarer ruffs, draws trumps and pitches his club on the diamond jack. But if you exit passively in trumps at trick two, declarer will be able to draw trumps, give up a diamond, then squeeze you between the fourth round of diamonds and the club king. So what would you have done?

There was only one way to beat the hand, and Berkowitz found it. He led a low diamond at trick two to his partner’s queen. Cohen accurately returned a third diamond, and Berkowitz led a fourth diamond when in with the spade ace, to kill the squeeze.

As the last deal of the 1998 Spingold hit the table, the Baze team needed a big swing to win. They would require 12 IMPs just to tie; but they had done precisely that in the semifinals.

Both tables bid aggressively to four spades. Both Souths received the friendly heart lead, and they finessed into the safe hand at trick one. When it held, they cashed the heart ace to take the discard, and there the plans diverged.

For the Nickell team, Jeff Meckstroth played a club to the ace at trick three and could not cope with the bad trump split. He tried a cross-ruff, but West could ruff in on the fourth club and drew trumps, taking declarer two down.

For Baze, Marek Szymanowski took the club finesse at once. The point is that you cannot handle bad spade splits unless clubs are very friendly, while if trumps behave, this line gains when clubs break 4-2 and the king is right.

After this start, Szymanowski had 10 tricks comfortably enough as the cards lay, by ruffing a club and cashing two top trumps to end in hand. Now he could simply run the clubs and claim his contract, giving up two trumps and a diamond.

So how many IMPs did Baze gain? Had North-South been vulnerable, that would have represented a 13 IMP swing, and a win for Baze by a single IMP. As it was, North-South were non-vulnerable, and the 11 IMPs swing meant a win for Nickell by 1 IMP.

In the finals of the 1998 Spingold Teams, the Nickell team took on the Baze squad.

Both tables reached game contracts after similar auctions. On the auction shown, Marek Szymanowski had little reason to lead anything but a club; there did not seem to be much point in following an active defense where trumps appeared to be splitting badly.

Declarer was allowed to win the club king in hand. He played trumps immediately, and the lie of the diamond suit compensated for the bad heart split, to allow him to make 10 tricks. By contrast, Meckstroth (West at his table) had a fuller picture of the deal since his partner had opened a 14-16 no-trump. Nonetheless, since North had bid spades, I thought he did remarkably well to find the spade lead, which started the force on declarer.

Declarer won, ran the diamond 10 at the second trick, then played trumps and was forced on a low spade return. He could never score his side’s club trick, and thus went one down, for 10 IMPs to the Nickell team.

On reflection, I wonder if declarer gave this his best shot. If North had played a club from dummy at trick three, Eric Rodwell would have had to make the slightly counterintuitive play of rising with the ace to continue with spades to beat him. If he fails to do that, declarer has regained the lost tempo. No doubt East would have done so, but I would have liked to see his opponents force him to find the play.

The deals this week all come from the 1998 Nationals at Chicago. This deal was played in the semifinals of the Spingold knockout event.

Both Souths opened one diamond and rebid one no-trump, but were taken to two no-trump by their partners.

Put yourself in the West seat, and if you want to make it a fair challenge, cover up the East and South hands. Would you have spotted the point of the defense here?

Both Wests led a low heart rather than an honor; this seems like the right thing to do, since if declarer has four hearts, you cannot afford to waste a high card at the first trick. As it turned out, the low heart lead went to East’s queen and declarer’s king.

At trick two, South returned the heart eight. Both Wests split their honors and were allowed to hold the trick. Back came a club to dummy’s queen and discouragement from both Easts. Now declarer led a spade to the king and West’s ace.

Have you decided what you would do now? Both defenders promptly laid down the diamond king and played a second diamond, to let their partner win and continue with a third diamond through declarer’s 9-7 for one down. Nicely done, but it was clearly the indicated play, since declarer had rejected an invitation to game but had the spade and heart kings plus the club ace. So East surely had the diamond ace.

For the record, in the other match, one North passed the one no-trump rebid, and one drove to game.