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.

This deal came up last year and saw two Australasian pairs challenging one another in a very delicate game. See if you can do better than the declarer at the table.

Four hearts in abstract is not terrible here for North-South, but it is hardly easy to get to. However, a misunderstanding about the meaning of North’s first double led South to a game where a bad break in one red suit or the other was virtually guaranteed.

West, led a diamond and East won his ace to return the suit. Declarer did well to win, lead a heart to the ace and finesse in hearts, but had made the fatal mistake of blocking the diamond suit by playing the king from hand at trick two and by not cashing the diamond queen before taking the heart finesse.

So he played a spade and the defenders returned the suit. Now declarer eventually ran into an overruff in clubs.

Had South unblocked in diamonds he could have discarded dummy’s losing club on the fourth diamond. He would have taken three diamond tricks and have drawn two rounds of trump (he would not even have needed the finesse) with the lead in his hand.

Declarer now ruffs a club, and leads a spade to the queen and ace. Whether West plays a spade or a club back, declarer ends up scoring all his three remaining trumps separately, plus the spade king.

The key is to get the club ruffs in before East can discard his clubs on the spades.

In today’s deal from a team game one declarer followed a traditional route to success, and played by rote, while the other took time to foresee developments and found the route to success.

At both tables North-South bid aggressively to the heart game and both Wests led the spade nine to the king. One declarer played a diamond at once, to set up his discard. West rose with the ace, and played a second spade, and now declarer could no longer succeed. He rose with the ace to play a trump, but West won his ace and thoughtfully underled his club ace, to allow East to cash his spade winner. Had declarer tried to take his discard early, East would have been able to ruff away the diamond winner.

In the other room South intelligently cut the defenders’ communications, by leading a club to trick two. West won the club queen and played a second spade. South rose with dummy’s spade ace, and ruffed a club. Then he led a diamond towards dummy’s honors, and West correctly ducked, realizing declarer would have played diamonds earlier had he started with a singleton diamond. South won the diamond king and ruffed a club, then led a low heart towards the 10.

West had to win the heart ace and exit with a heart. But South won this on the table with the 10, ruffed the last club, and led a diamond towards the queen. West could take his ace but had only diamonds left, so declarer had the rest.

Today’s deal was originally played in the International Championships in Budapest in 1937 and featured the player who would be my (and most knowledgeable people’s) first choice for the best woman player ever, Helen Sobel at her best, as declarer.

South reached three no-trump after a forcing two no-trump response on the lead of the spade seven. You might care to match wits with Sobel by covering up the East and West cards, and seeing if you would have duplicated her line.

Sobel made two winning plays on the first trick; calling for dummy’s spade 10 from dummy and then ducking East’s queen. Had she not put up the 10, East would have followed with the eight. Now whether declarer won or ducked this trick, the defenders would have been ahead in the race to establish five tricks. And had she taken the first spade, the defenders would have had communications in place to set up spades.

At trick two, after taking the continuation of the spade king with her ace, she played the club queen, hoping the club honors were split. East took this with the king and played the spade nine, taken by Sobel’s jack while she discarded a heart from dummy, as West also pitched a heart.

Then came the club 10. West won and exited with a club, taken by the jack. The diamond ace came next, followed by a diamond to the queen, and the fall of the diamond 10 meant the 4-1 split could be overcome.

With 17 points and a chunky five-carder South has too much to open one no-trump. A competitive auction sees him show his extras and reach three no-trump, on a low heart lead to the king. East shifts to the club 10, covered by the jack and queen. West reverts to hearts, and the defenders clear the suit.

South now needs to run the diamonds to make his game. If he has to give up a diamond, he will go down like a stone. The problem is whether to lead out the diamond ace and king in the hope of dropping the queen, or to take a finesse through East.

The general rule here is “Eight ever, nine never” meaning: play for the drop missing four cards. However West is known to have at least a five-card club suit. Moreover, West is also heavy favorite to have started with four hearts. This leaves room for only four cards in spades and diamonds combined. Rules have their place, but they are no substitute for rational thought.

South can afford to take one high diamond but then must run the three top spades, to find out the rest of West’s shape. When West follows to three rounds of spades and one diamond, it is clear that the rest of his cards are clubs and hearts. Declarer therefore finesses through East for the diamond queen.

If West had followed to only two rounds of spades, it would have been a guess as to whether he had a second diamond or a sixth club.

The three little pigs have taken to playing duplicate pairs and this board tested their skills in a tricky game contract.

At the table when the first little pig (who built his house out of straw) ended up in four spades, he received the lead of the club two. He won in dummy and took the trump finesse and was equally hurt and surprised when West led the heart queen — a thoughtful card — to his partner’s ace and received the club ruff. The second heart winner led to declarer’s defeat.

The second little pig, who built his house out of wood, saw the danger of the club ruff. He won the club in hand and took the diamond finesse, and when it held, he came to hand with the spade ace and took another diamond finesse. That let him cash the diamond ace to pitch a heart; but when he played a second spade, West could win and lead to his partner’s heart ace, to get the club ruff. That held South to 10 tricks.

The third little pig, who used bricks for his home, realized that the risk of the club ruff could be neutralized. He won the club in hand and finessed in diamonds, then came to the spade ace and finessed in diamonds again. One heart went on the diamond ace, and the second heart could be pitched on dummy’s losing diamond. West had a surprise trick, but no longer had an entry to his partner for the club ruff, so declarer had 11 tricks.