Today’s deal features two elements of defense that everyone should try to focus on. One involves the proper use of honors; the other involves understanding the role of small cards.

Here, North-South bid smoothly to game in hearts, and West leads the diamond king. On this trick, East must follow with the queen, promising either a singleton or possession of the jack. With queen-doubleton, you would want partner to cash a second diamond and work out what to do from there; you can, however, drop the queen from queen-doubleton if dummy has the jack.

To beat four hearts, West needs a spade lead from East, setting up the spade king before declarer can force out the heart king, draw trumps and run the clubs for a club discard. At trick two, West knows he can underlead in diamonds to East’s jack. Moreover, West can lead the diamond eight, his highest diamond spot card as suit preference, to get East to shift to a spade.

When East wins the diamond jack and shifts to a spade, declarer has a choice of evils. He can finesse and lose a spade trick at once, or he can go up with the ace and cross to dummy to take the trump finesse. Either way, though, he is doomed to go down a trick.

This concept of suit-preference carding by the defense is one of the hardest parts of the game for intermediate players to grasp. But once you do, it is worth the effort, since the opportunities for using these signals are so common.

In today’s deal, North bids spades, then raises his partner’s jump rebid of two no-trump to game. The opening lead of the club six goes to the eight, three and declarer’s four.

East’s card to the first trick is likely count, so South deduces he must take nine tricks without giving up the lead, or the defenders will cash out the clubs. A successful finesse in hearts will suffice, but if West has the heart king, it will not move to East’s hand later on in the deal. So South can afford to try every other chance that does not involve giving up the lead first.

To begin with, South cashes the top diamonds. The fall of the queen sets up dummy’s jack; good news, but still not quite enough, since South still has only eight top winners if the heart finesse is offside. South needs one additional trick.

So South cashes the top spades, taking care to end up in hand. If spades fail to break, South will be in position to lead the heart queen from his hand for a finesse.

However, when the spades break, South no longer needs to take the finesse. He leads the heart queen from his hand — just in case — then when West plays low, he takes North’s ace and cashes the good spade for his ninth trick

Incidentally, this line is sound in both teams and rubber bridge. But at pairs, the simple heart finesse is probably better, to avoid setting up unnecessary additional winners for the defenders if the cards do not cooperate.

On this next deal from last year’s Blue Ribbon qualifier, the defenders were handed a chance by an opponent, and they took it. Perhaps West should have led his singleton diamond as his most passive option, making declarer’s task far harder, though not impossible. West was not that clever. Instead, he led the heart five, and declarer erred by playing low from dummy. East applied the rule of 11 to cover with the six, and now declarer was in trouble.

The winning line is to cross to dummy in diamonds to go after spades, but declarer took an early club finesse, and now East-West could set up a club for their fifth winner before declarer had nine tricks.

At another table, Allen Kahn, playing with Jeff Rothstein, did far better as declarer. A world champion West led the heart five against three no-trump, also after having shown the majors in the auction. Kahn inserted dummy’s heart seven and took South’s queen with the king.

Kahn played back a heart at trick two, and West took his ace. A club went to dummy’s jack. Kahn next played the diamond 10, a diamond to the king, and then ducked a spade, West winning the jack to clear clubs.

Kahn cashed his diamonds, ending in dummy and squeezing West, who needed to pitch either a heart or a club to concede just one trick in the ending. When he pitched a spade, Kahn took the heart jack to pitch his club queen and ran the spades for 11 tricks.

As the reporter from the first day of this Kaplan Blue Ribbon Pairs said, when you qualify almost in last place for the next day, every little bit helps.

Glenn Milgrim came through in the clutch for his partnership. He was playing against Zia Mahmood and Dennis Bilde, one of the strongest pairs in the event.

Mahmood found the best defense against four spades by leading three top hearts, on which Bilde pitched his diamond 10 as declarer ruffed in dummy.

Declarer led the spade queen, which held (though East would have done better to cover). Milgrim read the position perfectly and changed tack at this point. He finessed in clubs, ruffed a club, then played three more rounds of spades to throw Bilde in for the forced club play. The diamonds in dummy took care of the rest. That was plus-620 and 59 out of 64 match points.

Ever the perfectionist, Milgrim was subsequently kicking himself for giving East the chance to defeat the game. The line that gives the defenders no chance is to take the club finesse at trick four, followed by ruffing a club, then playing the spade queen from dummy. Now the defense has no counter. East covers, and declarer plays four rounds of trumps to pitch low diamonds from dummy, throwing East in on the last one.

East can only lead a club now, to let declarer win the ace, on which he pitches dummy’s last losing diamond. The three top diamonds take the last three tricks.

The Nail Life Master Open Pairs at last fall’s nationals saw two very different approaches with the South cards. One earned a near bottom, the other a near top. Here is the good, with the bad (or perhaps ugly) to follow.

Jason Feldman, South, playing with Tom Carmichael, was one of the few to achieve par on this deal when he saved in seven hearts. He was sure West had a heart loser from his final double, or he would have passed the final decision to his partner. West therefore had to hold the club ace.

The defenders played three rounds of spades. Feldman ruffed, ducked a club (felling the ace), ruffed the diamond return, drew one round of trumps, then crossruffed the rest for three down — a good save, even against his opponents’ plus-680! Bridge is an easy game, isn’t it?

If that was good, the following result from the same board was comic or tragic, depending on which way you look at it. The names of the guilty or unlucky parties are withheld.

The difference between the auction at our second table and the one shown was that North had doubled a heart bid rather than raising the suit. In this room, South passed out six spades, also having worked out that dummy would have a singleton heart. But North’s double of a heart call convinced South to come up with the master play of under-leading his heart ace-king to his partner’s putative queen. That was minus-1,460; as Maxwell Smart would have said, “Missed it by that much!”

Today’s deal comes from the U.S. Nationals last fall and demonstrates that players from all over the world make these events the toughest of contests. Here, for example, we see Peter Gill of Australia trying to bring home a delicate contract of three no-trump from a team game.

Yes, North’s bidding looks a trifle forward, but we’ve all been in worse games. West leads the club five to the jack and ace, and when East returns the seven, he covers with the 10, allowing declarer to win the queen in dummy.

Clubs are clearly 5-3, so if the defenders obtain the lead in a side suit, they can cash their clubs and defeat you. After winning the second club, you must try to run the diamonds; the good news is that the suit breaks 2-2.

On the run of the diamonds, West pitches one heart and two spades, and East three spades. What should you do next?

At the table, Gill worked out that West had reduced down to three hearts and three clubs. If West had pitched a club, declarer would have set up a spade winner for his side. So declarer now exited with a low club. West could cash his clubs, but then had to lead a heart. The auction would have favored playing for split honors in the heart suit if West had shifted to the heart queen or heart jack. However, when West led a low heart, declarer was home without a guess. He ended with three hearts, five diamonds and one club trick.

At the fall nationals last November in Orlando, Florida, this deal presented itself in the Compact Knockout Teams. Compact Knockouts involve 12-board matches to reduce 16 teams to one in a single day.

In six clubs, you receive the lead of a low diamond. Plan the play to hold your club losers to one.

Did you come up with counting the 4-1 club breaks, West holding the singleton, and decide running the club 10 was best? That is true, although it would not be so if the club four and club six were interchanged. But it looks better to win the diamond ace, cash the club ace, then cross to the heart ace and plan to run the club 10. At the table, the club ace draws the seven from West and the five from East. When you cross to the heart ace and play the club 10, East covers and West shows out.

Don’t panic, but cross to the heart king and ruff a heart, and the suit breaks 3-3. Now you cash the spade ace and spade king (the fall of the queen makes life easy, but you did not need this to happen). Next you lead a winning heart in the five-card ending.

It won’t help East to ruff high or low. You pitch your spade, whether it is a winner or loser, ruff a spade to hand, and can return to dummy with a diamond to the king. At that point, you can lead either a heart or a spade. Whether East ruffs high or low, you can score one more trick and bring home the slam.

Today’s deal came from last fall’s Nail Life Master Open Pairs. At many tables, West opened one diamond, and his side got to two spades. If North had passed on his second turn, he would have conceded minus-110 and scored very poorly. When, as here, he doubled, he got his partner into the picture. His side now had the chance to play three clubs or defend against three spades, perhaps doubled. Either way, he should score well, since a spade contract takes no more than eight tricks.

But let’s look at how the play in three clubs should go on the lead of the diamond king. If declarer wins dummy’s ace and plays the club king, followed by a second club, East splits his honors. Declarer must win (or the defense takes the diamond ruff) and cash the hearts.

When North leads out the 13th heart, East discards a spade and declarer pitches a diamond. Now dummy must lead a diamond to the jack and king. The defense shifts to a low spade, letting East win his ace and cash the club queen, catching declarer in a very unusual bind. If declarer retains the club nine, then another trump locks him in dummy. But if he unblocks the club nine, two more rounds of spades promotes the club six to the setting trick. Isn’t that pretty?

Declarer can avoid the whole nasty mess by ducking at trick one. Once diamonds are established, declarer cannot be kept from cashing dummy’s diamonds after he pitches his own third diamond on the 13th heart.