After South opens one spade, North is too strong to raise to two spades but is not quite right for a limit raise to three spades. He plans to describe this hand by first bidding a forcing no-trump, then raising to three spades. However, when South shows a sixth spade, North should just up and bid game. A raise to three spades would be right were the spade jack the club jack.

After East wins the first two hearts and shifts to a club, South wins and can see he might lose two hearts, one diamond and one club. His best chance is to establish a long diamond, which will be easy if diamonds split three-three. But if they split four-two, dummy’s entries must be handled carefully.

South must duck a diamond at trick four. When West wins and returns a club, South can afford to cash only one high spade from his hand, since dummy’s trumps will be needed for entries to the diamonds. He then leads a diamond to the ace, ruffs a diamond high, leads a trump to dummy, ruffs another diamond high, and leads one more trump to dummy.

Trump having finally been drawn, South is in dummy where he wants to be, to cash the long diamond for his 10th trick.

Note that if South draws even one round of trump before ducking the diamond, the defense could then play a second round of spades, using up one of dummy’s entries prematurely. In turn, the defenders could set the game by shifting to trump at trick three.

As South in four hearts you can see you have one club and two diamonds losers off the top. Your first instinct might be to go for spade ruffs in dummy, but the problem with re-entries to hand makes this awkward.

Imagine you ruff a spade in dummy, cross to your club winner and ruff a second spade. So far so good; but when you draw trump, the bad break means you will never establish your long club.

Curiously, you can survive a 4-1 trump break, but not a 4-1 club break, when you would simply have four top minor-suit losers. Once you spot this, you may see the winning line of taking your spade ace and ducking a club at trick two. This allows you to be more flexible by retaining club entries to both hands.

If the defenders play on diamonds, you ruff two diamonds in hand, drawing trump with dummy’s excellent spots. If they play on spades, you ruff two spades in dummy, making South the master hand.

Equally, if the defense returns hearts, you win in hand, ruff a spade, return to hand with a trump, and ruff a second spade. That lets you play a club to your hand, draw trump and concede two diamonds at the end for 10 tricks.

The lesson of this hand is that when you have a 4-4 trump fit, you do not have to decide on the master hand immediately. You may need to wait until you have set up your ruffs. Equally, remember to protect your entries to retain trump control.

At matchpoints it looks reasonable to play three no-trump here. After all, the defense have eight hearts between them, as well as eight spades, and a heart lead gives you an easy route to nine tricks.

However, today West has a natural spade lead, and then the spotlight is going to be on East, and specifically on the partnership lead style. West wants to lead the spade king, to have his partner unblock the jack if he has it. After all, (short of some illegal body language) how can East show the jack if all he has is the three and two to encourage with?

It is for that reason that at notrump some partnerships play that the lead of a king shows a very good suit, requesting an unblock of a jack or queen. That makes this defensive problem easy today.

As you can see, if West knows to continue spades, he makes declarer’s task in three no-trump challenging. Declarer must duck two spades, then pitch a club from dummy on the third spade. Now what? The answer is to cross to dummy and lead a diamond toward the king, planning to duck if East plays the queen. When declarer’s king holds, he leads back a diamond. If West carelessly follows with the 10, declarer can duck without a care in the world. If West plays the jack, declarer will have to guess if West started life with two or with three diamonds. I don’t envy him his problem as to whether to win or duck this trick.

This is a hand where it is necessary to plan ahead, to envisage what might go wrong, and how to circumnavigate the problems.

When West led the club queen against four hearts, South was optimistic that the lead had solved one of his problems. But since there was a chance that the opening lead was a singleton, declarer won in hand and set about trump immediately, finding he had a loser there. Next he played a diamond. East captured the king with the ace and switched to a spade, to the king and ace. West cashed the master trump, then got off play safely with a diamond. Now there was no way for South to avoid a second spade loser, and that proved to be the setting trick.

If South had taken the club queen lead on trust, and assumed he had no loser in that suit, he could have succeeded by playing on diamonds at trick two, before touching trump. East will naturally capture dummy’s king with the ace, and probably return a spade. (Note that if East can give West a club ruff, the defense will be trumping a loser).

Assume West wins the spade ace and exits in diamonds. South ruffs, and plays his top hearts, discovering he has a loser there. But he can next eliminate clubs, and West will be endplayed in trump, sooner or later. Now that player is forced to lead round to South’s spade tenace, or give a ruff and discard.

This same sequence of plays is available after a club play at trick four.

North has a tailor-made hand for a jump to three spades at his second turn, showing extras and four trumps. With as little as the spade jack in addition to his values, he might make a jump to four clubs, a splinter bid setting spades as trump and showing the values for game.

In turn, though, South has enough to drive to slam. Depending on whether he is playing Blackwood or Keycard Blackwood, and what responses his side plays, the auction may follow slightly different routes, but North-South should find a way to end up in slam.

Against small slams there is no reason for West not to lead his best suit, hoping for a fast or slow club trick, together with a winner in trumps or hearts. Aggression is generally key against small slam, passivity against a grand slam.

In turn, East should win the first trick and return a club. Why? To weaken dummy’s trump — imagine the club king and club queen were switched to see what I mean.

South wins the club king (if he ruffs this trick in dummy he is dead). Now he leads the spade king, to retain flexibility in the trump suit. Since he won’t be expecting to negotiate jack-tenfourth in trump in either defender’s hand, he must ensure he does succeed when either opponent has a singleton spade honor.

Once the spade 10 appears from East, it will be easy to follow up with the spade queen and subsequently to finesse against West in spades to make the contract.

The parable of the wise and foolish virgins can be metaphorically extended to the world of bridge players. There are those players who go for instant gratification, while others plan ahead, and are prepared to trade off the delight of winning a trick for higher expectations further down the line. Today’s deal is a good example of how it can be worthwhile to invest a trick to good effect.

The hand cropped up in a team game, played for high stakes, with both tables reaching three no-trump on an unopposed auction and receiving a low spade lead to East’s 10. The first declarer won the opening lead and took a club finesse. East wasted no time in winning his club king and returning the spade eight. Whatever declarer did, he was fated to lose four spade tricks and to go one down in his contract.

By contrast, the second declarer was prepared to delay taking a trick to try to ensure his contract. He ducked the spade 10, and then went one further, ducking the second spade as well. East led a third spade, and West could win his ace, but now nothing could prevent South from taking a club finesse into the safe hand, East, and emerging with nine tricks.

The key here is that declarer can be reasonably sure West is the hand long in spades, while East is the hand with the potential club entry. If the club ace and king are switched, it may still be right to play for split aces, but the calculation is far more complex.

The auction may look bucolic — essentially South drives to slam facing an opening bid. But he cannot judge exactly which cards his partner has, so gambling on slam seems reasonable; it is, after all, unlikely to be worse than a finesse.

South uses Blackwood after forcing to game and setting spades as trump. When North shows one ace South sees that one ace is missing and contents himself with the small slam.

What would you lead with that West hand? A trump seems sensible; it is unlikely to take a finesse for declarer that he cannot take himself. My second choice is a diamond, my third choice would be the club ace.

When dummy comes down, South must form a plan and count his tricks. He should determine he has 11 top tricks; the 12th trick may come from a club or from an established heart. Best is to win the trump lead, then play off your two top hearts and ruff a heart high (noting that the suit splits 4-3). Now lead a spade to the 10 — you did not waste that card at trick one did you? Ruff another heart, draw the rest of the trump and throw your second and third clubs on the long heart and long diamond. You can give up a club and note, to your pleasure and relief that both the key honors there were offside.

Of course, if the hearts had failed to break, South would be in position to lead a club from dummy, instead of cashing the heart jack.

Today’s deal saw a top class pair miss a spectacularly challenging defense; can you do better?

Against four hearts West began with a top diamond, planning a heart shift if diamonds appeared unpromising. When East echoed in diamonds, West led out two more top diamonds, assuming that East might not encourage diamonds if he did not want his partner to lead a third round of the suit.

If dummy had ruffed low, East would have overruffed and returned a trump, taking out dummy’s sole entry before the hearts could be unblocked. Discarding from dummy would be no better, for East could then pitch a club, and ruff the third round of clubs, leaving South a trick short.

Accordingly, South ruffed in with dummy’s spade king and East discarded. Now declarer drew two rounds of trump with the ace and queen, cashed the club ace and exited with the spade two to endplay East for either a club discard or a lead away from the heart king.

Could, or should, East have done better? South is surely marked with his actual spade holding and the missing aces. The only way the contract can be in jeopardy is if the clubs are blocked, in which case East can see the looming endplay.

East must not only underruff with the jack when the spade king is played, he must follow up by playing the spade 10 on the first round of trump. Now declarer will finish a trick short. If you found this defense, congratulations – this might be the hardest problem of the year!