After today’s deal South must have felt not only that he had earned 14 IMPs for his side, but that he had scored a palpable hit on his opponent. While the defenders often have to disguise their holdings, an excellent declarer can participate in the game of bluff and double-bluff.

In the qualifying rounds of the 1989 Bermuda Bowl France played Chinese Taipei, and Patrick Huang as South declared six no-trump. On Christian Mari’s club lead, Huang won in hand and led a spade to the queen, then took five rounds of diamonds. Mari’s first discard was a low heart, then a low spade. Now Huang cashed his four clubs, on the last of which Mari threw the spade jack. With one spade and two hearts in each hand, Huang had reduced to an ending known as a strip-squeeze, where he had forced West, with a tenace in one suit, hearts, and winners in another, spades, to weaken his holding fatally in one of those suits. All declarer had to do was guess which.

Huang could have exited with a spade, hoping Mari would be left with two hearts and the spade ace, and would have to concede the rest to him. Or he could have taken the heart finesse, which would have turned out even worse. Instead, he decided that Mari’s discards were what a very good player would do if he could see he was going to have to bare his heart king sooner or later. So he played a heart to the ace.

Very nicely done by both sides.

South had a problem trying to decide how high to go here. His partner had signed off at his third turn, but when North showed a spade control by raising four spades to five spades, suggesting the king, South made a grand slam try. When North signed off South accepted his decision. North would surely have accepted the try were his spade jack the queen.

As it was, we have all been in worse grand slams than this, and in consequence South took his eye off the ball after a club lead. He won, drew trump, and laid down the spade ace, uttering an indelicate expletive under his breath when West showed out. There was no longer any way to make the contract, since declarer could not strip off the minors without surrendering control of spades.

In fact six hearts becomes a sure-trick problem, once the opening lead is not ruffed. Can you see how? At trick two, declarer draws trump with the heart ace and king, cashes the diamond ace, and next takes his remaining club winner. Then he makes the crucial play of a spade to the king.

If West had followed suit, declarer could claim his contract, losing just one spade trick at most. When West shows out, South wins the spade king, ruffs dummy’s remaining diamond, then ducks a spade. With the minors stripped out, East must now either lead away from his spade queen or give a ruff-and-discard. Either way, declarer has 12 tricks.

In today’s deal North’s bidding indicates a moderately strong hand with shortness in hearts. Any player who can bid two suits and raise a third clearly rates to be relatively short in the fourth. There is an argument that his strength is limited by the fact that he did no more than raise three clubs to four. There again, what else could North do if he wasn’t going to jump to game or use Blackwood?

In any event, South cuebids four hearts, then jumps to slam when North cuebids four spades at his next turn. The four spade bid promises a diamond control, since South has denied one by bypassing that suit at his previous turn.

The auction directs West to a diamond lead, and South can see that he will have no problem if clubs break. He takes the diamond ace to draw trump, but when he cashes the top clubs he finds West with a trump trick. Therefore he must try to discard dummy’s losing diamonds on his own hearts before West can ruff in and cash a diamond.

South starts with the three top hearts, pitching diamonds from dummy. West must follow suit to three rounds of hearts and can discard a spade on the fourth. South ruffs in dummy, play the spade ace and ruff a spade, then discards dummy’s last diamond on the fifth heart.

West’s ruff comes just too late to defeat the contract. Declarer can trump his losing diamond in dummy for his 12th trick.

The origin of a bridge deal is often shrouded in mystery, but today’s has a curious pedigree. I had seen a variation of this theme as a puzzle, and sharpened it up into a more challenging problem.

Last year, I was amused to find that the puzzle I had enjoyed had been borrowed wholesale from George Coffin, one of the earliest of puzzle constructors. Coffin was not a competent player himself, which made his ability to identify and classify new bridge themes all the more remarkable. It does make me wonder how many of my articles have resurfaced elsewhere…

If the diamond three is led against three no-trump, declarer must not play the jack, but must play low from dummy and take the 10 with the ace. Since he has to let the defenders in twice with their two black aces, he must take insurance against the defenders being able both to set up and run the diamonds. By temporarily preserving the diamond jack, he will gain a critical tempo if it should be East who gets on lead first.

As it happens, West has both the critical aces. But when he gets in with one and leads a second diamond, now is the right moment to finesse. East can win the queen but is unable to continue the suit, so declarer gains his tempo after all. If East had a diamond left, the suit would divide 4-3, and declarer would still survive.

Curiously, should North declare three no-trump on a heart lead, he must refrain from putting in dummy’s jack, for exactly the same reason.

When North opens one club, South should bounce directly to three no-trump to show a balanced 12-15 points. With this pattern, he does not want to suggest alternative contracts or let the opponents find out more about which suit it is right to lead.

When West leads the spade 10 against three no-trump, South must decide whether to win or duck, and which suit to attack first.

It is normally right to duck when you have two high cards to knock out, but here the fact that you can potentially keep West off play, and that South fears a diamond shift, might persuade him to win the first trick. What next?

If the club finesse works, South will have time to set up hearts and make overtricks. But if the club finesse fails, South will have only four clubs and will therefore need at least one heart trick for game.

So South must go after the hearts first; the reason is that the heart ace would be a certain entry to West for his spades. If West takes the first heart, his entry to the spades is gone. South can duck one spade then finesse clubs, and be safe unless East has five spades. When West ducks the first heart, South can switch to clubs and be sure of nine tricks.

If South tackled the clubs first, East would take the club king and return a spade to establish that suit, while West still had an entry. If declarer ducks at trick one, a diamond switch defeats him.

Our last board this week from the 1996 world championships at Rhodes shows two different approaches and results in the delicate game contract of four spades.

It was one of the more difficult defensive challenges of the event, and because duplicated deals were in use, the commentators had the opportunity to see how well everybody could do. The problem was rarely solved correctly — that is, if declarer chose the line of maximum pressure. We shall look at four spades, played first by North, then by South.

When Miguel Reygadas and Georg Rosenkranz of Mexico defended game from the North seat (after a transfer auction) Rosenkranz as East found the heart lead. Reygadas contributed the king and it was now relatively easy for Rosenkranz to duck when declarer led a low trump from hand. Reygadas won his trump ace, unblocked hearts by cashing his queen, then played a second spade, allowing Rosenkranz to give him the ruff for one down.

At another table Dennis Koch of Denmark had also overreached to get to game, from the South seat. On the lead of the heart king he won immediately, then led the spade 10 from dummy, to tempt the cover. When East obliged, the communication for the heart ruff had gone.

(You can imagine that if East had two hearts and the doubleton spade king the winning play would be to lead the low spade from dummy at trick two, to discourage that player from putting up his honor.)

All our deals this week come from 20 years ago, when the World championships were played in Rhodes. Today’s deal comes from a qualifying match featuring Fred Gitelman of Canada, better known these days as the face of BBO, the most popular site for playing bridge on the Internet.

Gitelman reached five diamonds from the South seat after East had suggested a decent hand with both majors over North’s weak no-trump. As an aside, it makes sense to play your normal system in place after an intervention of two clubs, with double being Stayman and keeping the red suits as transfers. But when the call of two clubs shows the majors, double to show a good hand and use two diamonds as natural. Meanwhile, jumps in the majors show shortage with both minors and game-forcing values.

In five diamonds declarer took the opening heart lead in hand, and led a spade to the queen and the ace (it might have been more interesting had East ducked this smoothly).

Back came a heart, so Gitelman ruffed, took the diamond king then guessed correctly to finesse in diamonds, on the theory that East apparently had at least nine cards in the majors, while West had at most six. Next, the spade king dropped the 10, and Fred guessed right again by going to dummy to draw the last trump, then taking the spade finesse against the nine.

Now he could ruff the last heart, cash his spade winner to throw a club away, and try the club finesse for an overtrick.

At the world championships held in Rhodes in 1996, this deal came up in the qualifying match between Iceland and Yugoslavia. Matthias Thorvaldsson had a road map printed for him by the defense, warning him of the bad breaks — and the safe route home.

When West opened an artificial two spades to show both minors and 11-15 points, Adelstein Jorgensen could overcall three diamonds. That specifically showed both majors with better spades (a call of three clubs would have shown both majors and better hearts). Thorvaldsson guessed to bid three hearts, and East — knowing his partner had opening values — quite reasonably doubled for penalties. He was a little unlucky to find his partner with a minimum and both opponents with something to spare for their bidding.

After the defense of two top clubs and the diamond ace West had to decide what to do next. A club, ruffed with the seven and over-ruffed might look best, but declarer’s trump spots are good enough for a cross-ruff now. If East wins and plays a trump back, he allows declarer to ruff out the spades and draw trump.

So at trick four West played a second diamond, and Thorvaldsson ruffed, took the top spades, then cross-ruffed two more spades in hand and two diamonds in dummy. Finally he cashed the heart ace and in the three-card ending he exited with the club jack, throwing dummy’s last spade. East had to ruff his partner’s winner and lead away from his trump tenace at trick twelve into dummy’s king-jack.

When the USA women won the world Olympiad in 1996 they had to come back from a huge deficit against Austria; this was one of their big gains.

Both tables played four spades doubled here. At one table Jill Blanchard as West found the good shot of a trump lead. The Chinese declarer took this in hand and played the diamond eight. Blanchard ruffed and played a club, and now her partner Irina Levitina could get in to play a second trump. Declarer could no longer establish a diamond trick, and declarer had just seven trump tricks, a club and a heart.

In the other room Juanita Chambers got a top heart lead and advanced the diamond jack from dummy. East pounced on that with the queen, but from here on in the defense could no longer set the contract. Although East could shift to a trump, declarer could build a diamond trick, using her diamond eight one way or another. But had East been able to bring herself to duck the first diamond, her partner could have ruffed and returned a trump, and now Chambers would have been one trick short as well.

Declarers should have crossed to hand with a trump at trick two to lead her LOW diamond. Now if West ruffs, the remaining diamond spots are good enough to establish a trick; if West discards, the play transposes into Chambers’ successful line. Should East win the first diamond and play back a low diamond for her partner to ruff, declarer can switch to a cross-ruff.