In today’s deal, North could open three diamonds, but a 7-2-2-2 pattern is not ideal at this vulnerability. Having passed, he has just enough to risk responding three diamonds in competition. A fit for diamonds in the South hand will make the North hand worth six or seven tricks, and North does have some tolerance for hearts.

Thereafter, South has enough values and spade stoppers to be able to try three no-trump with some confidence there will be a play for game.

After a top spade lead, it looks logical for South to win and go after the diamonds. Ducking the first spade trick may not cost, but it has no clear upside, either. So at trick two, South leads the diamond queen, with the intention of letting it ride for a finesse. When West puts up the diamond king, South must resist the temptation to win with dummy’s ace, since he can afford to give up one diamond in order to safeguard the game contract. Giving up the first diamond to West guarantees the rest of the suit against any possible break.

South can regain the lead, whichever black suit the opponents play, then lead a diamond and run the suit. But note that if dummy won the first diamond, East would later win a trick with the diamond 10. And the diamond suit would now be dead since there is no entry to dummy.

The general rule is that where there is no side entry to a long suit, declarer may be better off giving up the lead in that suit early to retain communication.

This deal comes from the fertile pen of Steve Bloom, who showed me a deal where he had missed a subtle point in the ending by being too thrifty with his resources.

Declaring two spades after having blown your opponents out of the auction, you get a top club lead and continuation as East echoes. (Yes, a trump shift was necessary by West.) You ruff the second top club, play a diamond to the king and duck a diamond to East’s ace.

Back comes a heart, and you win with the queen as West encourages. Now you play a third diamond to West’s queen, East pitching a club, and West leads a second heart to East’s ace.

You win the third round of hearts in hand as West follows with the jack. Next, you ruff the club jack in dummy as West produces the queen, persuading you that East has the spade king, otherwise West would have acted over your no-trump opener.

When you lead dummy’s diamond, you are ready to over-ruff East and play the ace and another spade; but what if East discards his last club? You must ruff your winner anyway, and then you can lead your fourth club. West will follow, and East will be endplayed to lead away from the spade king when he over-ruffs dummy.

So why must you ruff your winner? If you do not, pitching your club on the diamond jack, you will have to guess whether to lead a spade to your seven or to the 10 in the three-card ending.

At the Dyspeptics Club, there is little doubt (except in the minds of the players habitually sitting South and West) that the players in the North and East seats are technically more proficient than their partners, and are certainly more adept at transferring blame to their partners.

In today’s deal, North could have followed an invitational sequence rather than driving to game, but the final contract would have been the same. The play in four spades followed a predictable course over the first couple of tricks. In response to his partner’s bid, West led his doubleton heart. East won the trick with the 10 and cashed the club ace in case his partner had the king. When West followed with a small club, East took the ace and king of hearts, West discarding a small diamond. Declarer ruffed the third heart and finessed in trumps, and when they behaved, he took the rest.

South remarked complacently that he had followed the only chance for his contract, and North, who had been supervising proceedings carefully, commented dryly that he was lucky to have been given that chance. Neither East nor West rose to the bait, but can you see what he meant?

When East discovered his partner did not have the club king, he should have cashed a second high heart and continued with a low heart, persuading West to ruff in with his precious five of trumps. That forces an honor from dummy and gives East an eventual trump trick.

Today’s deal presents a series of possibly attractive lines. See how many different ways you might set about playing six spades on the lead of the club jack.

Simplest and probably worst is to rely on diamonds breaking by drawing trumps and playing the ace, king and a third diamond.

Another possibility is to duck a diamond, draw two rounds of trumps and now play on diamonds, hoping the same hand that is long in diamonds also has the long trump.

Better still might be to draw trumps and duck a diamond, hoping for a club-diamond squeeze if the same hand is long in both suits, since you can isolate the club menace by ruffing out the suit.

And finally, you might play for a dummy reversal, taking three ruffs in your own hand and drawing trumps with dummy’s high spades. Win the club king, take the diamond ace, spade ace and jack, and then take the diamond king (before the rats get at it), followed by ruffing a club high. Then play a heart to dummy, to ruff the fourth club, and lead a heart to dummy to ruff another heart with your last trump. You have taken the first 11 tricks, and dummy still has the master trump, so you are assured of your 12th trick. All that you need for this line to succeed is that neither defender has a singleton club, heart or diamond, so I’d estimate this line is probably around 90 percent — surely the best line here.

It is far from clear which game is best here. At first glance, you might want to play five clubs; on a diamond lead, you can play to ruff a diamond in dummy, draw some trumps and maneuver for diamond discards. On a trump lead, you might duck the first round of the suit and play along similar lines.

But it is also perfectly reasonable to end up in four spades on the sequence shown.

North’s preference for spades does not guarantee more than two trumps here. When the defenders lead and continue diamonds, pause for a second to consider how you might play the hand. Your problem is re-entries to your hand. At matchpoints, you might put all your eggs in one basket by unblocking hearts, then taking the trump ace and finessing the spade jack. That works if spades break or the trump finesse succeeds — about a 2/3 chance.

But playing teams or rubber, you can do better than that. After ruffing the second trick, the simplest line is one that gives up two trump tricks and a diamond. You unblock hearts and take the ace and king of spades, and have not surrendered the tempo by finessing unsuccessfully in the trump suit. You simply run your winning hearts and let the defenders take their two trumps separately. Meanwhile, you have 10 tricks in peace and comfort.

This line is only in jeopardy against 5-1 trump breaks; and if trumps were 5-1 offside, you were probably going down regardless.

I am sufficiently senior to remember the days when jump overcalls were invariably played as strong bids, although not forcing. Nowadays, the fashion is to play weak jump overcalls everywhere one can imagine — and in some places one cannot.

In today’s deal, my partner as South took his pre-empting duties seriously. West led the diamond 10, and I wondered if we might have missed a slam when my partner ruffed in. I need not have worried, since it turned out that my partner had to work hard to make his game.

He drew trumps in two rounds, ruffed dummy’s remaining diamond, then got off lead with the ace and another club. West won with the jack, cashed the king and was faced with the choice of opening the heart suit or conceding a ruff-and-discard.

He made a fair try by eventually shifting to the heart 10. This went to the jack and king, and East played back the heart six, on which my partner took a good view when he tried the seven from hand. This forced West’s queen, and South’s heart nine became our 10th trick.

West explained, at length, how unlucky he had been to find his partner with the six rather than the seven of hearts; with the latter, his defense would have succeeded. True enough, but at least one player at the table had to bite his tongue to refrain from commenting that it would have been better to shift to the heart queen. Then, no matter what declarer tries, he must lose two tricks in the suit.

My forays into rubber bridge are relatively rare these days. One of my strengths is that I can keep silent under provocation, but I am frequently tested when my partners seek to justify their more egregious plays. Today’s deal was a case in point.

As North, I produced a forcing spade raise and let my partner play game. West led the diamond jack to dummy’s king, and at trick two, declarer finessed in trumps, losing to West’s singleton king. It soon became clear that there was a second trump loser and, although the heart finesse was right, declarer ended one down.

We all waited expectantly for the apology and self-justification as the next hand was being dealt. It did not take long for my partner to tell me that of course he knew the safety play in the trump suit, but he was worried that he could not afford to take it if the heart finesse was wrong.

At this point my RHO mercifully cut off his rambling by opening the bidding on the next deal. But can you see the point that declarer missed? If South has no heart loser, he can afford the safety play in the trump suit by starting with the ace.

However, if there is a heart loser, he has to play the trump suit for no losers. The solution, therefore, is to take the heart finesse (which has to be done sooner or later) at trick two. Its success or failure would determine how to play the trumps.

In many ways, the hardest lesson to learn at bridge is how difficult a game it is. There are countless people who come to the game later in life, having been successful at everything else they ever attempted, but they never come to grips with the idea that hard work is required on almost every single deal they will ever play, in order not to end up with egg all over their face.

Here, you play six no-trump on a passive club lead. Your thoughts doubtless turn to whether you can sneak the overtrick by scoring a spade trick without losing one. You win the club lead in hand and play a spade to the queen, and now you’ll have 13 tricks if hearts break. But why should they?

Cash all the top clubs, pitching a spade from dummy, to determine that West has four. Now you know 10 cards in his hand, but to make doubly sure, you take the king and queen of diamonds and see West follow twice. Now the hand is an open book: Cross to the heart ace, run the heart 10, unblock hearts and come back to the diamond ace to take the rest of the hearts.

True, you won’t always be punished harshly if you don’t make an attempt to count every hand, but you must agree that you deserve to go down anytime you have an opportunity to count the cards and fail to do so!