In today’s deal, North does not have nearly enough to bid over a three-heart pre-empt to his right. He would likely not act even if he were in balancing seat. But when his partner shows spades, he can bid four hearts on his next turn to suggest a maximum pass with spade support. South is not interested, of course, so four spades becomes the final contract. Before you read through the play, you might speculate how you can hold your club losers to one.

After the lead of the heart king, declarer must win the ace and be faced with the possibility of four losers, even before he plays a trump and discovers the remarkably bad break. Paradoxically, though, he now has a real expectation that he can endplay West not once, but twice.

He must hope West began with specifically 3=7=2=1 shape. So he takes the diamond ace and king, then the club ace and spade ace. Now declarer must exit with the heart jack. (If he exited with a trump, West would win and exit with a low heart!)

West wins, cashes the spade queen, but then must play a heart. Declarer discards a club from dummy and a diamond from hand. A fourth round of hearts sees declarer throw a second club from dummy and ruff in hand. He takes the last three tricks on a crossruff, while losing two heart tricks. Who would have guessed that you could hold your club losers not just to one, but to zero?

South has a fine overcall of one spade at any vulnerability. He cannot afford to double first and bid spades later, for that would show a hand with greater highcard strength. If North cannot take independent action, game is very unlikely.

North is pre-empted out of the auction by West’s raise, but when South comes again, North has enough to bid game. While he could opt for no-trump, he can see that the defenders will be able to establish hearts easily, so spades looks safer.

The first few tricks are routine. South plays low from dummy (hoping to force an honor), but East defends strongly by putting in the nine. South ruffs the first heart, gets to dummy with a club and tries the trump finesse.

The finesse loses, and South is forced to ruff another heart. Now South must be careful not to run out of trumps. He must go after the diamonds, putting the trumps on hold. If he does so, by the time South has knocked out both top diamonds, dummy will be out of hearts. So when the defenders lead a fourth heart, dummy will ruff and South can save a trump. As it happens, the defenders will lead a club instead, and South can win and draw trumps.

If South had drawn trumps before attacking the diamonds, he would have left himself with only one trump. He would knock out one top diamond, and West would win. Then a heart return would allow East to defeat the contract by running the hearts when in with the diamond ace.

When this hand came up in a high standard event in the 1960s, what would nowadays be a reasonable call was then considered to be aggressive to the point of lunacy. But the value of total trumps was still not established. Sometimes, though, I wish those days would come back …

North-South were playing four-card majors, and it was North’s jump to four hearts after East’s double that was the subject of discussion. After two passes, West doubled again to end the auction.

West led the spade king, and when dummy’s trumps appeared, declarer thanked his partner for the dummy, then retracted his gratitude on seeing the rest of his hand. At trick two, West switched to a trump, and declarer, maybe still steaming over North’s lack of values, did not give the deal his full attention.

He won the trump in hand, cashed his top diamonds and ruffed a diamond, then ruffed a spade to hand. He could trump his last diamond high in order to ruff another spade, but now had to lead a club. East carefully overtook his partner’s nine to lead a second round of trumps, and South was left with a spade loser for down one.

If declarer had not lost focus, he might have won the trump in dummy at trick two. Now he would have time to trump three spades in hand (ruffing the third diamond high) for 10 tricks.

One final thought: Why didn’t West lead a trump originally? Then East could take a black suit lead and lead a second trump.

Today’s deal comes from one of my readers, Jeff Aker of Briarcliff Manor, New York. It cropped up in the Open U.S. Trials this spring.

The auction at the table was different from what is shown here. In real life, North had opened a precision diamond and had shown a three-card club raise with a singleton major, but the final contract was as indicated. Plan the play after a low spade lead from West goes to dummy’s ace.

The contract will be easy to make if clubs break 3-2. What is the best way to protect yourself against the 10 possible 4-1 breaks? (East can have one of any five singletons, or West can have one of any five singletons.)

If you finesse the club jack, then, as the cards lie, West will win and play back a spade, and you will go down. Leading the queen from dummy covers some of the bases, but not enough, and it will not succeed today.

The key to the play is that the hand is about more than the club suit. If you can score two club tricks without losing the lead, you can switch your attack to hearts and come to three heart tricks and two in each of the other suits. Realizing this, Aker played a club to his ace followed by a club to the queen, and could then shift his attention to hearts when clubs failed to behave.

This line takes care of all 4-1 clubs except the singleton four or five with West.

South at the Dyspeptics Club was somewhat disappointed to have roughly two aces less than his usual hand-strength, but he still managed to find a way to bid to game. The jump to three spades was invitational and justified only by the trump spots, and North had plenty in hand for his acceptance.

When West led his singleton club seven, declarer put up the king from dummy and dumped his 10 from hand to try to mislead East as to who had the singleton. However, East could see that a club ruff was the most likely way to beat the hand, so he returned the club four, suit preference. If West could ruff, East wanted him to lead diamonds next, the lower-ranking side suit.

West happily ruffed in and trustingly led back the diamond five. When East took the ace, his winning continuation was unclear. If West had the diamond king, East needed to return a diamond; if South had the diamond king and West had started with Q-x-x in trumps, a third club was necessary to promote the setting trick in trumps. With a blind guess, he returned a third club. Declarer guessed to ruff high and draw trumps from the top to make his game. Which defender was more to blame?

West should have known that he had no trump honor to promote. He needs to lead the diamond king at trick three, then a second diamond. If East knows South will follow to a third club, he can overtake the king and play on that suit. Otherwise, he will let the diamond king hold.

At the table, I may not be good at extending sympathy to my partner, but at least I avoid open criticism. Had I been North here, I doubt I would have been able to offer condolences convincingly.

That player took only a slightly optimistic approach when he drove to the grand slam, reasonably confident that either diamonds or spades would run for declarer.

When West led the club 10, declarer could see 12 certain winners and had three suits where a 13th might materialize. Before you look at how play developed, think about how you would approach it.

At trick two, South tested the spades. It was only when East followed to the third round that declarer realized that he did not have a good discard from hand. Since diamonds looked more promising than hearts (because of the chance the jack might fall in two rounds), he let a heart go from hand. When the bad news in spades was combined with the fact that it was West who had diamond length, declarer was out of chances.

What should South have done differently? The key is to play the heart ace-king, cash the remaining clubs (pitching a heart from dummy), then take the heart queen, discarding a spade.

At this point, you can claim when hearts break. But if they had not split, you can decide whether to make the normal play of running spades from the top, or to play diamonds first, depending on what has happened in the other two suits.

In today’s deal, you have two chances to bring home your game. One of them is obvious and easy to quantify; the other is less easy to spot. See if you can take full advantage of your opportunities.

Against three no-trump, West leads the heart 10, and you take the first trick in hand. Your first and best chance is in diamonds. You cash the diamond ace and king, hoping the queen will drop, in which case life will be very straightforward. But there is no good news today, as West discards a heart. Can you see how you might find a second chance to bring home the game?

Your only realistic chance is to find spades 3-3 with the king onside. But beware! If you cross to the club ace and finesse in spades, then play two further rounds of that suit, East might see he should win and shift to clubs; the defense would then prevail.

So the first play in spades must be low from hand. East’s best play is to win and shift to the club jack. You duck in hand and take the trick with dummy’s ace. Then you lead a spade to the queen, cash the spade ace and run spades. Eventually, you exit with the heart king.

At this point, the defenders have four top tricks, but when West wins his heart ace, he can do no better than exit in hearts and force you to concede the last two tricks twice over. Before that happens, you will have nine tricks in the bank.

In today’s deal, North forced South to respond to his take-out double, then jumped to game at once, hoping his partner did not have a complete bust. He was disappointed in that regard, but the game still had decent play.

West would have done best to cash two diamonds and exit passively in spades. Declarer would then have had to read the position very precisely to come home. But it was tempting for West to lead a third diamond, hoping to shorten declarer or dummy. When he did that, South ruffed in hand and immediately took the club finesse.

Once the finesse succeeded, declarer’s only problem was how to draw trumps safely.

It would have been fatal to draw trumps by leading the ace and king, followed by the jack. West would have won the third round, and at that point, South would be out of trumps. West would then have led another diamond to force out dummy’s last trump, and declarer would lose control of the hand.

But South smelled a rat from the earlier defense, and instead simply drew one round of trumps with the ace, then gave up a trump trick. If West had ducked, dummy would have cashed the heart king and run his winners in spades and clubs, leaving West with one trump trick.

But when West took the heart queen, and led a fourth diamond, South still had a trump to ruff the diamond in hand. He could then lead a club to dummy, draw the trumps and claim.

The idea of underleading an ace against a slam is one that appeals to the true gambler. The possibility that you might lose the ace if you don’t take it is dangerous enough that, even when the opportunity arises, few players will take advantage of the chance.

However, in Opatija, Croatia, three years ago in the European Championships, Tommy Garvey seized his chance for an underlead during Ireland’s match against Russia in the Open Series.

South had shown a limited hand with clubs and spades and no extra values, then admitted to one key-card in response to Blackwood. The auction had made it clear that North held a diamond control, which in the light of Garvey’s hand was likely to be the king rather than shortage.

If dummy held the king plus the queen, or no secondary honor, underleading the ace could prove very costly, especially if South held a singleton diamond. Also, declarer might subsequently discard a diamond loser on dummy’s hearts. None of this was especially unlikely, since declarer had at least nine cards in the black suits. But if dummy held both the king and jack, the gamble might succeed.

Garvey went for the gusto and led the diamond four to trick one. Although he might have suspected something was afoot, declarer had no reason not to put in the jack. John Carroll produced the queen and returned a diamond to set the slam with the first two tricks. That resulted in a slam swing to Ireland.