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.

At the 1998 Summer Nationals in Chicago, a hand arose demonstrating the truism that circumstances alter cases. The play of a hand can sometimes follow dramatically different lines, depending on whether there has been any opposition bidding.

You would want to reach six clubs here, in the absence of any opposition bidding. How you get there is a lottery, however; South’s jump to five clubs was as good a shot as anything else, and North felt he had more than enough to raise.

It looks normal enough to ruff a couple of spades in dummy, hoping that the black suits will behave. However, West’s opening bid here makes that line impractical. You have to find a different plan of attack on the lead of the diamond 10.

Strangely enough, the bad spade break is good news, if you think about it from the correct angle. It appears from the lead that West has short diamonds, and that therefore both of the other suits are likely to behave for you.

You must take care at trick one to duck the diamond lead and ruff in hand. Then play the spade ace and trump a spade high, stripping East of all his spades. Now you draw all the trumps and lead the heart king, then finesse in hearts. When East wins, he has only red-suit cards left and must return the lead to dummy, allowing you to discard all your spade losers on dummy’s heart and diamond winners.

Today’s deals comes from the Chicago Nationals nearly 20 years ago. You play four hearts on the lead of the diamond queen and a diamond continuation to the 10 and ace.

East continues with the diamond nine, which you guess to ruff with the 10, and to your relief, it holds. Now you draw three rounds of trumps ending in dummy, East showing the doubleton. You ruff out the diamond, cross to a top club and cash the 13th diamond.

In the four-card ending, dummy has the spade queen and ace-king-third of clubs; what four cards do you have in hand?

Before you decide the answer to that question, it is time to work out the full count on the hand. East has shown three spades by his support double, together with two hearts, and thus is 4-4 in the minors. You have missed your chance to make your game if you did not cross to dummy by leading the club nine or eight at the previous trick. So your last four cards should be a high and low club and the jack-10 of spades.

If you remembered to do so, you can unblock your second club spot from hand, under dummy’s second club winner, hoping that the club jack or club 10 falls on your left, as it does. You can be confident that East has already been squeezed down to the bare spade ace or king, and you can now endplay him with it to lead clubs into dummy’s tenace.

In today’s deal from the Wildwoods Club, each of the Three Bears tried, but only one succeeded, in bringing home a contract of three no-trump. When they came home, Goldilocks got to hear the full story from each of them.

On the lead of the spade jack, all the Souths ducked in dummy. Each East took their king and returned a spade, won by South, but now the play diverged.

Papa Bear opted for simplicity when he played the ace and another club. When the suit failed to break, he cleared the clubs, but he did not have nine winners before the defenders could get in with their red aces and cash the spades.

Mama Bear saw a little more into the hand when she tested clubs. When they didn’t break, she tried diamonds, leading the king from dummy. West correctly ducked the king, then won the queen and thoughtfully shifted to the heart jack, which was ducked around to declarer. Declarer was now locked in hand and had to lose two hearts, two diamonds and a spade.

Baby Bear combined his chances effectively. He led a diamond to dummy at trick three, then a club to hand and a second diamond, unblocking dummy’s honor under the ace. West cleared spades, and only now did declarer test clubs. When they failed to behave, he led a heart to his hand and played his diamond winner. Then he endplayed East with a diamond to give him a second heart trick. That was declarer’s ninth winner.

In this deal from my local club game, North was contemplating opening two clubs when he was irritated to hear West (playing with one of the less simpatico members of the club) open three diamonds in front of him.

That didn’t leave him much else to do but double and hope that partner did not insist on playing hearts. The worst happened when South bid and rebid hearts, and North had no option but to pass and pray.

West led out his two top diamonds and continued with the suit at trick three. Prospects were not good for declarer at this point, but ruffing low or discarding looked hopeless, so he ruffed the third heart with dummy’s queen and was over-ruffed with the king.

Suddenly South sensed light at the end of the tunnel. He won the club return in dummy and finessed the heart 10 successfully. When the remaining trumps fell under the ace, he was safely home.

North would not normally have done more than congratulate his partner, but given his opponents, he saw the opportunity to insert the needle, by remarking how unusual it was to have 28 HCP and no game makeable. When East remarked acerbically that South had made game, North smiled and said that just because game had made did not mean it should have. Do you see why?

If East discards on the heart queen and splits his honors on the first round of trumps, he ensures two trump tricks for his side and defeats the contract.

All finesses are equal — in that, in the absence of information to the contrary, they all have a theoretical 50 percent chance of success — but some are more equal than others.

Consider today’s deal, where there are five possible losers and four possible finesses to take in four hearts. But taking those finesses in the right order is the key to eliminating two of them.

West led the diamond queen, and South played low from dummy. He covered the continuation of the diamond jack, since the chance that East had the doubleton diamond ace was very small, whereas West might easily have found the shift to a club if left on lead — indeed, he could have done so at trick two. South ruffed the third diamond, drew trumps, then fell at the final hurdle when he finessed the club 10, losing to the jack. The queen held on the spade return, but when the second club finesse failed, the game was down.

After drawing trumps, ending in dummy, the unavoidable spade finesse should come next. When this wins, South is in business; he does not need either club finesse to succeed because he can arrange a strip and endplay. South takes the spade ace and enters dummy in trumps, and North’s last spade is ruffed in hand, reducing the North and South hands down to just clubs and trumps. Now a club to the 10 fixes East, who can win cheaply but must then either return a club into dummy’s tenace, or concede a ruff-and-discard.

Today’s deal comes from an international match between the women of Australia and Chinese Taipei. Both tables played six spades here.

The Chinese Taipei declarer received a heart lead and decided to protect against 3-0 trumps in either hand. She won the heart lead in dummy and led a low trump from the board, covering the jack with the ace and playing a second trump. When the defense exited passively in diamonds, South eventually fell back on the club finesse and doubtless considered herself a trifle unlucky when it lost.

That was not a bad line, but in the other room Cathy Mill correctly decided that her endplay chances were better if she played trumps from the top, and that the combination of 3-0 trumps on her right with the club finesse onside was too small to worry about.

Mill won the heart ace, cashed the spade ace and diamond ace, then crossed to table with a heart and threw two clubs on the diamond king-queen. Next she ruffed a heart to eliminate both red suits, and only then did she play a second spade to endplay West.

That player could either lead a club into the tenace or concede the ruff-sluff and let declarer pitch her last club from hand as she ruffed in dummy.

For the statistically minded, the chance that East has all the spades and the club king comes in at about 1 in 20, while the chance that West has the doubleton spade king and the club king is approximately 1 in 5.