As West, you lead the diamond queen against four spades, partner discouraging with the two. Declarer wins the ace, plays the spade ace-king, dropping your queen, and crosses to the spade jack, your partner following with the nine, six and 10.

Now the club queen is run round to your king as your partner plays the five, and declarer the seven. How do you plan the defense?

South has 18 points outside hearts (the club ace, plus the top diamonds and spades). He must therefore hold either the heart king or queen. Your partner’s small club suggests an original three-card holding (he should play the six from a four-card suit). Also, the fact that he did not play the spade 10 on the first round of trump suggests he has the heart queen not the king – given that his signal in trump should be suit preference not count.

So it cannot be right to switch to hearts, playing East to hold the king. If declarer has four clubs, then he surely either has a doubleton heart or doubleton diamond; to have any hope to beat the hand, you must place him with the latter.

So, exit passively with a club or diamond. Declarer will cash his minor-suit winners ending in dummy, and lead a heart from dummy, hoping the ace is right or that he can duck the trick to you. But provided your partner is awake, he will rise with the queen or 10 when a heart is led from dummy. The defenders will then score three heart tricks to defeat the game.

With three four-card suits, North begins by bidding the suit under the singleton. This leaves him in good position for his next bid.

As expected, South responds in North’s singleton. North can now introduce his spades conveniently, over which South has a problem. He almost has enough to invite game because of his source of tricks, but with a known misfit, a call of one no-trump looks the prudent way to go. When North invites game (also a restrained action) South has plenty in hand for his acceptance.

After a top club lead, South must be careful not to duck, for fear of a spade shift, when the defenders might set that suit up. He must win; but in which hand? The answer is to win in dummy to protect South’s entries to the hearts. But the shortage of entries to the South hand means that the routine play in hearts will not succeed. South can set up hearts but won’t be able to reach them.

Instead, South can solve his problem by overtaking the heart king with his ace. He next leads the heart jack to force out the queen. East refuses this trick, and declarer continues with the heart 10.

East must take the heart queen, and can lead the spade 10. South is now in complete control, and can eventually return to his hand with the club ace to cash the last two hearts. He takes four hearts, one spade, and two tricks in each minor.

After North’s opening bid, South’s thoughts will immediately turn toward slam. His plan will be to bid hearts then diamonds. But once his partner raises hearts, showing extras in the process, South can use Blackwood, perhaps expecting to be heading towards a grand slam.

However, somewhat to South’s surprise, North shows only one ace by his response of five diamonds. Once South discovers that an ace is missing he can do nothing but jump to six hearts. This is a call that should end the auction, since North has no reason to overrule his partner. If South were interested in a grand slam, he would go slower.

West’s best chance to defeat the slam on opening lead is his singleton – even though it is in dummy’s first bid suit. If South wins the trick, underestimating the danger, and leads a trump at once, East will take his heart ace and return a club for his partner to ruff.

But there is a way around the problem; the simplest way is for declarer to discard his club on dummy’s spade king. So South unblocks the spade ace, then cashes the diamond ace and ruffs a diamond in order to reach dummy. Declarer is then in position to play off the spade king, discarding the last club from the South hand.

South can now afford to draw trump. When East wins his ace and leads a second round of clubs, South can ruff high and draw the rest of the trump to make his slam.

In today’s bidding North produced a subtle conventional agreement after South limited his hand with a non-forcing two no-trump call. North bid the other minor as a conventional slam-try, after which South’s modest hand suddenly became extremely suitable for slam. In this sequence North could have signed off over two no-trump in three of the agreed minor, or bid a major to show shortness.

Against six clubs West led the spade nine, and the jack was covered by the queen and ace. That was good news for declarer, who now had to focus on the small concern of 4-0 trumps, and the question of how to hold the red-suit losers to one.

Eventually declarer gave up on worrying about 4-0 trump, since he wanted to preserve entries to his hand. He played off the king and queen of trump, then came to hand with the ace. Next he tried a low heart towards the queen. The idea was that if East won with the king there would still be time to try the diamond finesse.

However, it was West who produced the king and he returned a heart. Now, with no other entry to hand, South was reduced to overtaking the heart queen and finessing unsuccessfully in diamonds.

South was right to try the hearts before the diamonds but what he missed was that he must attack hearts at trick two. Then, if the heart king is onside, he can unblock the heart queen and come to hand with the trump ace to arrange his discard in the fullness of time.

In today’s deal your two no-trump rebid suggests a balanced 12-14 and North wisely opts for the major-suit game, seeing the aces as more useful in a suit. Game is certainly easier to make in spades than in no-trump. You appear to need a trump break, and some decent luck along the way. In fact, though, you need very little to work for you, so long as you time the hand well, though you have to be careful to avoid the threat of over-ruffs in clubs.

The defenders lead the heart jack, and you win it with the ace. Next comes a club to the king and West’s ace – good news from your perspective, since now the threat of a trump promotion against you is considerably reduced. West can do no better than return a heart, which you win with the king. Now comes the club queen, followed by the spade king and a spade to the ace.

With the defenders now holding the master trump, you take a club ruff, and can deal with the 4-2 club break in your stride. You cross to dummy with a heart ruff, trump another club, to establish the suit, and cross to dummy for the last time by leading a diamond to the ace.

You can now advance your 13th club, discarding a diamond from hand, with nine tricks in the bag. The defenders can either allow you to take this trick, or they can ruff in and allow you to score the remaining trump later.

In today’s deal a complex auction sees you flirting with a grand slam before settling for 12 tricks. You win the lead of the heart queen and test trumps; bad news!

It may seem you cannot now avoid losing both a trump and a diamond. But an alternative perspective may help: you actually have seven winners in the side suits. If you can manage to single in all five of your trumps in hand, that will add up to 12.

Start by cashing your three top trumps, then take your second heart winner, followed by the two top clubs. Next you play the king and ace of diamonds (of course if East can ruff any of these winners you will go down like a stone, but luck is with you so far). The time has come to start scoring your low trumps. So you ruff a club low, then cross your fingers and return to dummy with the diamond queen. When East follows suit, you are home.

The last two cards in your hand are the spade six and a heart loser. When you lead the fourth club from dummy, East can either ruff with his master trump, letting you discard your heart loser and score your trump at trick 13, or discard at trick 12 and let you ruff the club with your last trump. Contract made!

For this line to succeed, you need East to hold at least three diamonds, two hearts and two clubs, and to be unable to discard from a three-card diamond suit on the third club.

In today’s deal from a Cavendish pairs tournament 15 years ago, Bob Hamman did very well in the auction and Zia Mahmood did equally well in the play.

Hamman’s quantitative four no-trump gave Zia the chance to opt for slam in diamonds, and after a club lead, Zia put in the 10. Then he cashed the diamond ace, came to hand in clubs, and drew trump.

Now he knew West, Geir Helgemo, had the heart ace and the club jack, so East was a favorite to hold the spade king. (Zia could also see that if this were the case, six no-trump would go down). So Zia cashed the spade ace and ran the queen, to make 13 tricks.

On the same deal, George Jacobs found a very nice play here to defeat the slam, when given a chance by declarer. Norberto Bocchi reached six diamonds on an unopposed sequence and received a club lead from Jacobs.

Bocchi won it in hand and played a spade to the ace, ruffed a spade, then played a diamond to the ace, ruffed a spade with the diamond 10, and cashed the diamond king-queen.

At this point he led a club toward dummy, intending to insert the 10 to create an extra dummy entry to finish ruffing out the spades and then cash them. But Jacobs crossed him up by inserting the club jack to block the suit, and deny declarer the extra entry he required.

Now Bocchi needed the heart finesse — and when it failed, he was set one trick.

Part of the secret of bridge is drawing inferences from the bids that are made, as well as the ones that aren’t. In this deal from the Cavendish Invitation Pairs, playing with the late Sidney Lazard, Bart Bramley drew an interesting conclusion to bring home his delicate contract of four diamonds.

West led the spade king and continued with a low spade. Bramley put up the jack to see which honor East had, trying to develop a count on his opponents’ high cards. He ruffed the spade, then drew two rounds of trump ending in dummy, and tried a club to his king. When that held, he led a third diamond to dummy and played a second club.

Michael Cornell, sitting East, took his ace and exited safely with a third club. Bramley won in hand, and now was able to build up a picture of his opponents’ assets.

East’s cuebid raise had shown a maximum pass; this meant that he rated to hold both the club and heart aces and the spade queen. So Bart decided he was not a favorite also to hold the heart jack. Since his partnership were playing the weak no-trump, East might have opened the bidding with that card in addition to his known 10-count, whether or not he had the club jack.

So Bart tabled the heart 10, and now whether West covered this or not Bramley was able to make his contract. Had West put up his jack, declarer would eventually have been able to finesse successfully against the heart nine.

The Cavendish Pairs was held in Nevada for 15 years from the mid 1990’s onward, after the tournament moved from New York. It attracted players from all around the world, and boasted the largest cash prizes of any bridge tournament, with a prize pool well in excess of a million dollars.

This deal from 20 years ago shows Michel Abecassis taking advantage of a defensive slip to bring home a very tough game contract against Simon De Wijs and Ricco van Prooijen of the Netherlands.

After a club lead, Abecassis might have tried to run the lead round to his hand. The defenders would then have won and got in with the diamond ace to play a third club, and declarer would almost certainly have gone down now.

Instead, declarer rose with the club ace at trick one and drew three rounds of trumps with the aid of the finesse. Next he led a diamond to the king and ace, and back came a sneaky low heart.

Michel guessed well when he flew up with the king and exited with a low heart. East was forced to win the ace and cash the club king, then exit with the club jack. Abecassis ruffed this and ran all of his trumps, reducing to a position sometimes referred to as a pop-up or show-up squeeze.

On the last trump West had to keep his heart and thus came down to one diamond. But now Michel could play a diamond to the queen in the expectation that the jack would fall from East.