When partner opens a strong no-trump, North should drive to game in hearts. Many partnerships use Texas Transfers, so that they can transfer at the four level to play, or to use Blackwood, or even in some case to show voids by bidding a new suit. Meanwhile, the two-level transfer lets you subsequently jump to game as a mild slam try, with a jump to four no-trump in this sequence being natural and quantitative.

Against four hearts a spade lead would give the defenders the upper hand, but West has no reason not to lead a diamond. South still has his work cut out for him though, even after this start. Take a minute to form a plan.

It looks natural to dispose of dummy’s losing spade, but declarer still has to make sure he holds his club losers to three. If he leads clubs, the opponents will return trumps at every turn. This will prevent South from ruffing a club in dummy, and he will lose all four clubs.

The solution is to set up dummy’s spades, since this can be done in such a way as to shut West out. So at trick four, declarer runs the spade jack to East, pitching a club from dummy. He wins the heart return in hand, and advances the spade 10 to pitch another club. When it holds, he tries the spade nine, and West covers. So South ruffs high in dummy, and now draws trump ending in hand to discard another club on the spade eight. He can then lead to the club king to try for the overtrick.

North has a hand slightly too strong for a direct raise of one heart. If not playing two over one, it looks better to bid diamonds, then raise hearts to invite game. If you play two over one, you can use the forcing no-trump planning to jump to three hearts next. Either way, you should reach four hearts, though North might briefly consider making a slam try en route to game. If a call of four diamonds shows a source of tricks, he is certainly worth it – consider that South might have the same hand with the diamond queen instead of the heart jack.

In four hearts on a spade lead South can see the danger of four top losers (three in clubs and one in spades). One possibility would be to take a diamond finesse — not a success as the cards lie, and not the right play in theory either. The correct line requires careful manipulation of the entries.

Best is to win the spade lead and play one top trump from hand. Then play the diamond ace and king, and ruff a diamond high. Lead a heart to the eight for another diamond ruff, then cross back to dummy to draw the last trump. Now the last diamond allows you to throw away a loser and you can take the club finesse for the overtrick. I hope you are pleased when it loses — that means that if you had mishandled the play, you would be down.

In today’s deal you win the opening spade lead in six hearts, to test trumps. The 3-0 break should not present a problem; the real issue is how to avoid the loss of a trick in each minor.

Life is easy if the club finesse succeeds. You can discard a club on the spade king and another on the third round of diamonds. How might you succeed with the club finesse wrong?

If you can sneak a diamond past the ace, you can discard your other diamond on the spade king. Indeed, if you lead a low diamond and the ace goes up, you will have two discards coming on the diamonds and one on the spade king. So you can discard all three potential club losers.

Which defender should be the intended victim of this maneuver, known as a Morton’s Fork? The lack of opposing bidding provides a clue. Assume the worst: West has the club king as well as a spade suit headed by the queen-jack. The opponents’ silence is entirely consistent with 5-5 spades.

If West had the diamond ace, club king and five spades he would surely have overcalled one spade. So draw trump ending in dummy (ensuring you leave the six as an entry) and lead a low diamond towards the jack. If East plays low, you win with the jack, cross to dummy with the heart six and throw your last diamond on the spade king.

If East takes his ace and switches to a club, take the ace, unblock the diamond jack and pitch your clubs on dummy’s three winners.

At the Dyspeptics Club there have been dark hints dropped that South might be practicing the dark arts. West has gone so far as to suggest exorcizing the stock of unused playing cards, since South appears to be able to direct every available ace and king into his own hand. Were it not for the fact that he does so little with them, his opponents would be even less happy with him.

As it is, though, he manages to floor more contracts than anyone else – helped no doubt by the fact that he seems to declare as many as the other players put together.

Today’s deal was no exception. Having managed to restrain himself from bidding the grand slam, he expansively claimed his honors at trick one, winning the ace and king of hearts, then cashing the club ace and king, and coming up short when East discarded. He tried ruffing a spade and leading a diamond towards his hand, but when East did not fall for the bait, he had to go down one. After North shook his head, South realized he might have missed the point of the deal. Can you see his mistake?

Win the heart eight at trick one, ruff a diamond, cross to the heart queen and ruff another diamond, then cash the club ace and king. Claim if they break, if not, ruff out the spades and lead the diamond king. When East covers, you pitch one of your club losers, and wait for the ruff/sluff, that lets you pitch your other club loser from hand.

North-South had done well to maneuver themselves out of three no-trump or five diamonds, but four spades was hardly a bed of roses.

At the table declarer won the first heart lead and led a diamond to the king. East ducked, won the second diamond, and had a real problem. Did his partner have a possible trump trick or four small spades? Eventually he gave his partner a diamond ruff (the correct defense, since if West had jack-fourth of spades and no club jack, he could revert to hearts and eventually build a second trump trick for himself). When West took the diamond ruff he also took his time before finding the best defense, a trump exit. Now declarer had eight top winners, but no way to take a heart ruff and draw trump or to set up clubs without losing two tricks in the process.

Declarer’s safest play was to duck the heart ace and let the defenders win the first trick. He needs to knock out the diamond ace while keeping hearts under control, and if the adverse trumps are split 4-2, a heart force of South’s hand would be embarrassing. The simplest plan is to invest a heart trick, letting North, the hand with the shorter trumps, take care of subsequent rounds of hearts, if need be. Then trumps can be drawn, if necessary in four rounds, and diamonds established. Four trumps, four diamonds, and two side aces would make the game without any need for heart ruffs or club finesses.

Consider in abstract how to play today’s diamond suit of J-9-8-6-3 facing A-K-4 to give yourself the best chance of four tricks? Best is to cash the ace, in case an honor falls, then cross back to the other hand in a second suit, and lead the nine, letting it run unless the next opponent shows out.

Now look at today’s deal, where South ended in six no-trump and West led the heart three. Declarer needed to generate two extra tricks from diamonds, so he played low from the table and won East’s queen with the king. A top diamond saw both opponents follow suit, but only now did declarer realize he was short of the entries to hand that he needed for the safety play in diamonds.

He was reduced to playing off the second top diamond, hoping for the suit to break. However, when East showed out, the contract was doomed.

Declarer had exactly the right idea, but had miscalculated the entries needed to the South hand. Try the effect of the heart jack from dummy at the first trick. Whether East can cover or not, declarer has ensured an extra entry to hand when he needs it.

He now cashes a top diamond, comes to hand with a heart, and leads the diamond nine. West plays low and, as planned, declarer follows low from dummy. If it loses, he can claim the balance. When the nine wins, he can cash dummy’s diamond winner, return to hand with the spade queen, and force out the diamond queen to claim 12 tricks.

Goldilocks has now completed her training at bridge, and has advanced to competing at the duplicate. Papa Bear expansively invited her to play with him, “So she could see how the experts play.” Keeping her doubts under firm check, Goldilocks accepted with as much grace as she could, and was privileged to watch him get his paws on the dummy, often with singular lack of success. In four hearts, he won the opening club lead in dummy, led a club to the ace, and tried to ruff a club in dummy. East over-ruffed and led a spade to his partner. A fourth club sank the contract without trace, when East could over-ruff.

Mama Bear improved on that line at her table. She won the club lead in dummy to lead a club to her hand, then ducked a spade to cut the defenders’ communications for immediate ruffs. Now when a third club came through she ruffed in dummy and was over-ruffed, but she was still in decent shape. She would have survived had trumps broken, or had East held a singleton. But not today.

Baby Bear showed how it should be done. The club queen went to the king, and he next led to the club ace. Now came a third club, throwing a diamond from dummy. When West led a fourth club, declarer threw a second diamond, rather than ruff.

West shifted to a diamond, and declarer won in hand, drew two rounds of trump and ruffed his diamond loser in dummy for his 10th trick.

Congratulations if you managed to bid the hand to three no-trump. This is not at all easy to do, though maybe South should probe with three hearts over two spades, and now if North guesses to bid three no-trump South has an easy pass.

When West leads the heart eight against four spades, East cannot tell for sure whether his partner has one or two cards in the suit. But since it rates to be very difficult to beat the hand unless his partner has a singleton, he wins the ace and returns the suit, hoping for the best. (South should follow with the heart 10 at the first trick in an attempt to confuse East, but it should not work). If South does follow with his low heart at his first turn, it makes East’s life easier, as now he can be sure that his partner does not have the doubleton eight-three.

Anyway, East gives his partner a ruff, West returns a diamond to his partner’s ace, gets a second ruff….. Whoa! How did West know to play back a diamond? There is an answer, but it is not obvious. The question of which minor suit ace East has is determined by the size of the heart East returns to give his partner the ruff. His play of the nine calls for the higher suit.

This suit preference signal (also known as Lavinthal, or as McKenney in England) would allow East to show the club ace instead by returning a low heart.