Today’s hand, from the Dyspeptics Club, failed because declarer did not pause for sufficient thought at trick one.

South picked up his usual powerhouse and found himself in three no-trump a moment later. West led the spade four, to the six, seven and nine. Declarer followed up with the heart king, then continued the suit. When the jack failed to drop, he could see no serious alternatives to pressing on with developing that suit. A fourth heart let East in, and the spade through declarer’s tenace saw the game consigned to the dustbin.

After the event North was less than impressed: can you see why? As North commented, South should have risen with dummy’s spade 10 at trick one. If it holds, you are in the hand you need to be in to try for a safety play in hearts. Since declarer needs only four heart tricks for his contract, and overtricks are essentially unimportant at this form of scoring, making the contract is the paramount consideration.

When dummy’s 10 holds, South knows that West holds the missing spade honors, so East is the danger hand and needs to be kept off lead. At trick two, best is to play a low heart from dummy, and if East follows low, insert the eight. West wins, but no return from that side of the table can harm him.

South can win the return in hand, cash the heart king, and when both defenders follow, enter dummy in diamonds to enjoy the heart suit.

Today’s deal saw North-South stretch to slam, when North felt obliged to show his ace. South subsequently felt entitled to expect to find his partner with some values in the minors, since he clearly had no honors in trump. But dummy’s 3-3 pattern in the minors meant declarer had considerable work to do.

After a top diamond lead, how would you set about trying to develop 12 tricks? The key is to take three tricks from the clubs, which requires the finesse to work. Imagine a simple line such as winning the spade and finessing clubs. You might now draw trump and rely on clubs breaking, or play ace and another club, or even draw two rounds of trump and then either play ace and another club, or duck a club. As the cards lie, none of these lines work. Equally, if you draw two rounds of trump too early, East can win the club and a play a third trump, preventing the ruff in dummy.

You might justly consider yourself just a little unlucky. But it would not be that unlucky, since you would have missed your best line for the slam. That involves the somewhat counterintuitive line of ducking the first club. You win the return, draw precisely two rounds of trump, then lead to the diamond queen and finesse the club queen.

When it holds, you play the club ace and ruff a club, exploiting the fact that the hand with four clubs has the long trump. This lets you ruff the fourth club safely in dummy.

Difficult bridge hands come in all shapes and sizes. Sometimes as declarer you are faced with a hand where you cannot see the winning line, while at other times you may have too many attractive options. Today’s deal falls into the latter category: plan the play in six hearts on the spade ace lead.

You ruff and draw trump, finding they break 2-1. Having done so, how do you play the minor suits to best advantage?

First things first; if you take the club finesse and it loses, you are almost certainly down, so long as the defenders don’t do anything stupid. If you play ace, king, and a third club, you will make if the club queen falls. Equally, if clubs break 3-3, you still have a 50 percent chance of forcing the opponents to play diamonds. Overall, though, that does not work out at much more than a one-in-three chance.

All things considered, it looks best to play on diamonds before clubs. If you run the queen and find that West has the king, you will always succeed. Either West will cover, letting you win and play another diamond, to set up two diamonds for club discards; or West ducks, and the queen holds, eliminating your diamond loser.

By contrast, if you play to the diamond ace and back towards your hand, you don’t always succeed when East has the king. (Consider the diagrammed deal with the diamond two and king switched).

So you should run the diamond queen immediately, and fall back on the club finesse if necessary.

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.