In today’s deal from a head to head match there were contrasting approaches taken by the two declarers in four spades. One relaxed, envisaging that there were just three aces to lose, and consequently went down without a fight, while the other recognized the danger signals and took careful evasive action.

At both tables South ended in four spades, and in each case the lead was a small heart, allowing East to take his ace and return the suit. That let declarer win in hand and take it from there.

At one table South simply played a spade toward dummy’s king. West won, and returned a heart for his partner to ruff. The diamond ace was the setting trick.

The second declarer, seeing the lead of the heart three, suggesting five in West’s methods, immediately played on clubs. He overtook his second honor with dummy’s ace, throwing a heart from his hand on the club jack.

It would have been easy to relax now and play a spade to the queen and ace, but South saw the risks associated with that. West could have won and played a third heart, to promote a trump for his partner.

Instead, South ruffed a heart back to hand and led a low spade toward the dummy. It now did not matter if West went up with the ace and played a third heart, as he did, hoping his partner had the spade queen instead of the jack. As the cards lay, declarer was safe against any defense.

After the overcall of two no-trump by West to show the minors, North’s three spade call suggested the shape and values for a simple spade raise. With a better hand North could double to show defense, or cuebid three clubs or three diamonds. One of those bids shows hearts and a good hand, one a limit raise in spades. That lets a direct three heart call be non-forcing.

Against four spades West led the heart two, to the nine and ace. Dummy’s diamond length was very bad news, but declarer did his best by drawing trump ending in dummy. He now needed to build the diamonds into an extra trick – but he was still in danger of running out of trumps.

So at trick five South led the club four. The idea was to keep East off lead if humanly possible, so declarer needed him to have only one club honor — or to make a mistake by failing to put up a high card from a holding such as Q10xx.

When East played low on the first club declarer inserted the nine. West won cheaply and returned a club to the ace. Declarer countered with the diamond queen, hoping to get lucky and find East with a significant singleton – the nine or jack. After winning his diamond king, West could see that a diamond return would be fatal. So he led back a club. Dummy ruffed, while declarer discarded the heart four from hand. Now South ran the diamond eight round to West’s jack, and claimed the rest.

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.)