South’s two club opening is based on the fact that his 22-count should be upgraded, rather than downgraded into a two no-trump opener. His combined honors (and great controls plus absence of jacks) make this a clear choice.

North-South should have a Stayman auction after the two no-trump rebid to allow South to play three no-trump. Just as you can check for the major-suit fits over the one no-trump opening, so the three club bid over the two no-trump opening or rebid allows you to find your fits, one level higher.

On the diamond queen lead, there is no good reason to win the trick – maybe the opponents will shift? When the defenders continue diamonds, South must win and try to find a way to turn eight tricks into nine.

The right technique is to cash the top three clubs at once — if the suit splits, all your problems are over. When West shows length, you must turn your attention to hearts, but you need to be careful with the entry position. Take one top heart from hand, and then go over to dummy’s ace. When West shows out you have a marked finesse of the heart 10 for your ninth trick. If you play the ace then king of hearts, you find out about the bad break in hearts but the absence of entries to the board mean you can no longer get to dummy to take the marked finesse.

When South competes to three spades because of his sixth trump, West might consider bidding four clubs. But it looks normal to pass and lead the club seven to East’s ten.

East now cashes the club ace and plays a trump, and South needs to establish a heart trick in order to find a home for his slow diamond loser; is this a case of bricks without straw? Not quite.

Declarer’s heart spots offer him some slim chances. South wins the trump switch and leads the heart eight, and West takes his king and shifts to the diamond two. South wins in hand, cashes a second top spade, then runs the heart seven round to East’s jack.

Now East exits with the diamond jack, won in dummy, and South has to work out what is happening in hearts. To do so, he must guess what is going on in diamonds. East would surely have shifted to a diamond at trick three from Q-J-9. Given that, the fall of the spotcards might suggest East began with only a doubleton diamond, to go with six clubs and one spade. Thus West has only one heart left – and it won’t be the ace. Declarer must lead the heart queen from dummy and run it, discarding his diamond loser, when East ducks stoically.

At double dummy, East can do better by putting his partner in at trick two with a club for the diamond shift. Now the defense are ahead in the race to establish their extra red-suit winner.

I’ll let you be the judge of whether someone made a very good or bad play to generate a slam swing here, or whether you might have made the mistake that was committed at the table. In today’s deal at both tables six no-trump was reached in short order and the club five led .

In both rooms declarer led a spade to the king, and at one table East took his ace. As declarer, in which order would you cash your winners now?

South did well to cash hearts early, knowing no competent defender would unguard that suit, but that the rest of his distribution might be less clear. On the third heart East discarded a club, and now the rest of the top clubs forced East to discard, revealing he had begun with only three clubs. The late Jean Besse referred to the small clubs as neutrinos and emphasized that defenders had to be careful to avoid such revealing plays.

After taking the rest of the top spades, South discovered West’s original shape had to be precisely 3=4=2=4. So declarer took the diamond ace and king and finessed the diamond 10. Nicely done.

In the other room both the first and second spades were ducked; now declarer could not afford to play a third spade. He cashed all the clubs and hearts, finding some information but not enough to be sure on the spade count. So eventually he went with the percentages and played diamonds from the top; one down.

South is grateful to receive a diamond lead against four hearts since it prevents the defenders from having a chance to cash two spade winners. Even so, after a trump shift at trick two South can afford to lose only one trick in total from hearts and clubs.

South draws two rounds of trump with the king and queen, finds the bad break, and must now focus on handling clubs without loss. He takes the diamond queen discarding a spade, then cashes the club king and ace, but must not then lead out the club queen. If he does, West will ruff high, cash the spade ace and return a trump, leaving declarer with a club loser.

South gains nothing by leading the high club even if clubs are three-three. Better is to try to ruff the third round of clubs with dummy’s remaining trump. He would then plan to return to his hand by ruffing a diamond, would cash the ace of trumps, and lead good clubs until West takes his trump trick.

As it happens, West ruffs the third club high and does best to lead a low spade through dummy’s king.

Under ordinary circumstances, South would try to guess where the spade ace and queen were. But here if East can gain the lead with a spade, he will lead another club, and West will ruff in again, for the setting trick. East cannot be shut out if he has the spade ace, so South puts up dummy’s king – just in case – and scores an unexpected overtrick.

When South opens one club North should introduce his heart suit, weak as it is, rather than support clubs. If South has four hearts this may be the only way to find the fit.

Without a four-card fit for hearts, South continues with his original plan to rebid in notrump. North knows to raise notrump rather than chase the rainbow of a minor-suit game.

In three no-trump on a top spade lead South can see that he has nine tricks if the club finesse succeeds. What if it fails? South should conclude that he will need a diamond trick if that is the case.

If South errs by leading clubs at trick two East will win and will knock out the spade ace. Then West will gain the lead with the diamond ace to run the rest of the spades. So South must lead diamonds first to knock out the sure entry in the hand of the dangerous opponent. The diamond ace is a sure entry for West, but if that player has the club king, it will do him no good.

When South plays on diamonds, West can take the first diamond and lead another spade, and he will thus set up his suit. But when South ducks one spade he can ensure that West will never regain the lead to cash his tricks. East will later get in with the club king, but will then be out of spades.

If West ducks the first diamond, South of course changes tack and develops the clubs for his nine winners.

Can you see the curious symmetry in the play and defense of today’s deal?

It would have been a mistake for South to open one club instead of one no-trump here. You can occasionally open a suit if you downgrade your 15 HCP, or upgrade your 17 HCP into a balanced 18-19. But these are very much the exceptions rather than the rule.

West leads a top spade against three no-trump, and when declarer puts up the king, East wins and returns a low spade. It is not clear who has the long spades, so South ducks the spade and wins the third, pitching a diamond from dummy. Now come four rounds of hearts, East discarding two diamonds.

The crux of the deal comes when South innocently leads the club nine from dummy. If East plays low, declarer runs the nine to West’s jack. The defenders have a spade to cash, but with the club king onside, South has the rest. Notice that if East covers the club nine with the king, West will be left with two club stoppers not one.

The parallel comes in South’s correctly putting up one of the black kings at trick one, and East doing the same at trick eight. The bottom line is that when you have a doubleton honor it is generally correct to cover a significant card led by dummy, should there be no realistic chance that you can score a trick with that card if you retain it. The trick, of course, is to determine what card is significant.

Loose lips sink ships, they say. When one of the eventual defenders contributes a bid during the auction, declarer will occasionally be gifted valuable information, which he must take care to use intelligently.

While that may be obvious, it can occasionally be equally important to remember when the defenders have had the opportunity to bid but declined to o so.

Suppose West did not open the bidding and has already shown up with 10 points. He is unlikely to hold a missing queen, and so you can confidently finesse his partner for that card. Today’s deal is a fine example of this theme, where the best play is indicated by a bid that a defender did not make.

When West leads the heart king against your spade game and switches to the club six, how will you play the contract?

You can confidently assume West holds the heart ace-king. Since he is a passed hand, he cannot also hold both the diamond ace and spade queen. So after winning the club switch with the ace, you should cash the spade ace and then finesse the spade jack. If the finesse loses to the spade queen with West, you can be sure that the diamond ace will be onside and you will still make the contract. The finesse gains when the cards lie as in the diagram, because you avoid losing a trump trick. Today, if you play for the drop in trumps, you will go down.

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.