Today’s deal comes from a pair game at my local club game. I was the beneficiary of some inexact defense, though at the time it wasn’t entirely obvious to me who had dropped the ball. In retrospect, though, I think the answer is clear; what about you?

At my table I was South in three no-trump, and West elected to lead a low spade — a small heart might have worked better, I admit. East took the spade two with the ace and continued with the spade jack. I did my best to cover this in normal tempo, and West could not see anything better to do than win and play back a spade.

I did my best to cash my nine tricks without indicating my relief at this turn of events. But of course the defenders had failed to cash their diamond winners – two spades and three diamond tricks making five. Who do you think was at fault?

When the spade two was led, East should have assumed that his partner had one of the missing high spades, so while taking one top diamond might start to establish the suit for declarer, it could hardly be fatal.

Therefore East should cash the diamond king at trick two before returning the spade jack. When West takes declarer’s spade queen with the ace he should know to cash the diamond queen. A third diamond to East’s ace sees the defenders achieve their target without having to rely on one or other of them possessing the spade 10.

The contract of four spades looks extremely straightforward, once you can see that trumps break. But sometimes appearances are slightly deceptive. The trap on today’s deal is one you would never fall into, isn’t it?

When dummy comes down, the quick red suit losers plus the requirement to play for ruffs strongly suggests you need spades to behave. That being said, ruffing two diamonds in dummy or two hearts in hand seems to generate enough tricks. The problem with entries seems to argue for ruffing diamonds in hand, in which case you can play for seven tricks from the minors and three from the trump suit. That is indeed so, but you do have to be just a little careful.

When the club 10 is led declarer must win with a high club in hand, leaving the club queen as an entry to dummy. Then declarer cashes two high spades and plays three rounds of diamonds ruffing in hand. Thanks to the unblock at trick one, he can now use the club entry to dummy to ruff the last diamond in hand.

If you block yourself in clubs, you have to start the crossruff without drawing two rounds of trump, or allow the opponents to play a third round of spades after you have played two. In either event, you will find yourself unable to make your game today. In the first case you will run into an overruff, in the second case you make one fewer trump trick than you need.

Manchester’s Michelle Brunner, who died far too young a few years ago, achieved something no other player has done before or since, when she won herself the International Bridge Press Association’s Best Defense of the year in consecutive years.

You may care to play the East cards and cover up the West and South hands to test yourself before reading on. West led the heart jack, ducked in dummy, which you won with the king. How do you envisage defeating four spades?

If you now look at all four hands now you may decide that it still looks impossible to set the game. But at trick two Brunner found the diabolical switch to the club nine! Now put yourself in declarer’s shoes. The nine looked for all the world like a singleton, so in order to reduce the risk of a ruff South played ace and another spade. West won the king and continued with a second club. Quite understandably, declarer finessed; now East won her king and gave her partner a club ruff to beat the superficially unbeatable game.

Note that normal play and defense would have seen declarer make her contract easily. Not only did Michelle have to have the imagination to spot the possibility, but she also needed to paint a false picture for declarer. And of course she had to find the rest of the cards lying the way she wanted.

The real world doesn’t always work that way, as we all know, but today the stars aligned perfectly.

The Smith Echo is a defensive signal against no-trump. Either first or third hand can echo at their earliest opportunity on a lead by declarer, to say that they particularly like the suit led. It does not apply if a count signal is required, and it is controversial only because defenders must be careful to signal in good tempo when using it, or they risk conveying unauthorized information.

Here, for example, West leads the spade six against three notrump. South takes East’s jack with the king, then plays on diamonds. West takes the second diamond, while observing East follow with the diamond seven then nine. East cannot now have the spade queen, or he would have echoed in diamonds, to show an unexpected extra honor in the opening lead suit.

West can see there is likely to be no hurry to attack clubs if his partner has the king. But if declarer has the club king and partner the heart ace, the failure to return a heart at this point would give the contract to declarer.

West must therefore return his heart eight now, hoping his partner can win the ace, and revert to spades. Even if East doesn’t have the heart ace, but some heart holding such as the king-queen or king-jack, plus the club king, the contract should still be beatable. Declarer cannot come to nine tricks without developing an extra club winner.

Today, if West returned anything but a heart, declarer would take nine tricks. But the heart return leads to two down.

I often warn against relaxing prematurely because you believe yourself to be in a safe contract – or going to the other extreme of giving up because things appear hopeless. Today, against six notrump West leads the diamond 10. East wins the trick with the diamond ace and returns the six. Plan the play.

Unless the spades are 4-0, with East having the length, you will have tricks to burn. However, you should be in no rush to tackle the spade suit. Instead, after winning the second trick with the diamond queen and throwing a spade from table, you should cash four rounds of clubs and the heart ace. Then after returning to hand with the spade queen, you will know what to do.

If West has followed in spades, you can claim the rest of the tricks, based on the spade suit alone. The only problem arises when West is void in spades, as here.

However, after cashing the heart and diamond kings, two hearts, three diamonds, four clubs and one spade will have been played. Everyone will be reduced to three cards, and so, in order to keep the spades guarded, East will have had to discard the heart queen, hoping that his partner had the jack. You can now take the last three tricks with your heart jack and dummy’s spade ace-king.

This line of play also succeeds in the considerably less likely case that East began with five diamonds and the spade length, as your fourth diamond will become high.

North has a tough decision over his partner’s call of three no-trump, suggesting powerful spades. Today it would be right to pass, but correcting to spades is understandable.

Although a heart lead defeats the spade game, because the defense can play three rounds of hearts, removing declarer’s only entry to be able to cash the 13th heart, West has a normal opening lead of the diamond queen. How can declarer take advantage of this reprieve?

Declarer wins the lead with his ace, draws three rounds of trump and ducks a heart. His plan will be to duck a second heart and play for 3-3 hearts, or perhaps a somewhat unlikely squeeze on West.

As the hearts are 3-3, the defense should be able to predict the sequence of events. If they passively exit in diamonds, declarer has time to go about his business and come to 10 tricks. What can East do on winning the first heart? Answer: he should boldly shift to the club king! He knows that this is safe if his partner has the club ace, and if West has the club queen without the 10 the defense never had a chance. But on today’s lie of the cards South has a real problem when the club king hits the deck. He must duck this card if East has all the top clubs and West the heart entry; but today that play would be fatal. East would continue with a second club, and another impregnable contract would bite the dust.

Declaring three no-trump, South should win the opening heart lead as cheaply as possible, and must then assess his trick count properly in order to plan the play to best effect.

South can count on winning one trick in each major, two top diamonds, and four clubs. The total comes to only eight tricks, so one additional trick must be found; and diamonds is the obvious place to seek it.

The problem is to generate that additional diamond trick while keeping East off lead. If East obtained the lead he would play a heart through South’s king, and West would defeat the contract by running the hearts.

By contrast, if West obtains the lead in diamonds, the contract will not be in danger, since if a further heart lead comes from West, South is sure to win a trick with his king. Given this, how does South develop the diamonds so as to keep East off lead if possible? The answer is that South must begin the diamonds by taking the ace and king. If the queen doesn’t drop, South will take his chances on leading a third round of the suit.

As it happens, the diamond queen does fall on the second round of that suit, and declarer can now play for overtricks — though he should probably not succeed in making more than 11 tricks. If South had tried a diamond finesse, he would have lost to the queen, and then he would have been defeated by a heart return.

When South opens a strong no-trump, North has no reason to preclude a suit contract, so he uses Stayman. But when no spade fit comes to light, he will head to the no-trump game.

After a low diamond lead, South must employ a relatively straightforward hold-up play to make his contract. He refrains from taking his diamond ace until the third round of the suit, then plays hearts from the top. The reason for tackling the suits in this order should become clear when South next loses the club finesse to East. The defenders would prevail if East could reach his partner’s long diamond suit, since they would then take a total of four diamonds and one club. But thanks to the hold-up, East is out of diamonds.

East does his best, by returning a spade. Now if playing rubber bridge or teams, South must not risk the finesse – though at matchpoint pairs the problem might be a slightly more challenging one. Since declarer can take nine tricks by putting up the spade ace and cashing out his top winners, he should do so.

Note both that South would go down if he took the diamond ace prematurely, for then East would have retained a line of communication to his partner upon winning his club trick. Equally, had declarer not tested the hearts early, he would not be sure if he needed to take the spade finesse or not, since he would not know how many heart winners he had, and thus how many spade tricks he needed.