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!

Today’s deal comes from a match on Vugraph 20 years ago. South’s simple overcall, followed by the double of two spades for take-out, suggested extras and suitability for play in clubs and hearts.

West did not have enough to compete to three spades, since he had already shown five or more spades with his initial response. He led his doubleton diamond, and declarer played low from dummy and took the ace in hand, then put the heart queen on the table. West thoughtfully followed with the heart nine, suit preference for spades as opposed to diamonds.

At this point, East went into a brown study, and as a commentator, I remarked that he could infer that declarer had the doubleton ace-queen of diamonds and three spades, since West had sold out to three hearts, thus a likely 3-5-2-3 shape. West’s suit-preference signal marked him with a top spade honor, but declarer had not tried for a spade ruff in dummy. Given all of this, East knows virtually the full deal; but how should he defend?

East won and played back a diamond, then got in again in trumps to cash two spades and play a third diamond. Declarer ruffed high, drew the last trump, and claimed.

Had East thought a little deeper, he might have worked out that he should duck the first trump; now declarer must lose either a third spade or a diamond ruff. A parallel defense (leading a low trump) also works if declarer plays on spades at once.

Today’s deal comes from Frank Stewart’s latest book, “Keys to Winning Bridge.” As Frank points out, North misbid his hand. Instead of redoubling, it would have been better to bid two no-trump, Jordan, showing a maximum pass and four trumps. And maybe South should have passed three hearts, since West was likely to have the spade king for his double.

West leads a trump against the game; South draws trumps and leads the diamond jack, which is ducked, and a second diamond. When West takes the ace, he can recall that East did not bid one spade over the redouble. If East had four spades, he would surely have been obliged to suggest East-West’s best place to play.

So South should have four spades. Even if East has the spade ace, the defense will still get their spade tricks, but if East has the club ace, West must shift to clubs — specifically, to the “surrounding” club jack in case South has the 10. The defense will get two clubs, and West will still get his spade king.

In a practiced partnership, East might signal by following with a count card on the first diamond, then with his smallest diamond at the second turn. This would be suit-preference to suggest club strength.

The question of when to show count, as opposed to suit preference or attitude, is a highly complex one. If East only gets one chance (say, if West wins the first diamond), then his card is more clearly suit preference.

It is always satisfying when, at an early stage of the deal, you can work out the likely shape and honor structure of the unseen hands, and defend accordingly.

When Sweden took on Monaco at the 2014 European Championships, Fredrik Nystrom for Sweden opened the East hand with one club, a call that could have been made on as few as two clubs. The South player for Monaco overcalled one no-trump, and that ended the auction.

Johan Upmark started by cashing the heart ace, which in his partnership methods asked for attitude. On receipt of an encouraging card signal from East, he continued with the heart king, then the jack, declarer discarding a diamond from dummy.

Upmark now knew South had four hearts and surely four spades, since that suit would almost certainly be 4-4-4-1 around the table. Since South would have doubled (instead of bidding one no-trump) with doubleton clubs, he must surely have three clubs — and therefore could hold only a doubleton in diamonds.

So Upmark got off lead with a low diamond, and East won with the ace, collecting the king from declarer. Nystrom next cashed his heart queen and returned a diamond, taken by South’s queen, but setting up West’s jack in the process.

Declarer now had five clubs to cash plus the diamond trick he had already scored, but there was no way he could set up a spade or diamond winner before the defenders could cash out for down one.

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.