After inspecting dummy in today’s deal, South remarked that his chances might well depend upon who held the club two. His opponents snickered, but as the play developed, it became clear that South had a valid point.

Against three no-trump, West sensibly opted for the heart jack on opening lead. East was allowed to win his top hearts, and then switched to a spade. Declarer won on the table and saw he needed to develop the clubs for a second trick.

He began by leading the club jack from the board, which East won with his ace to continue spades. He expected South to play off his club king, after which East would be left with the queen-nine over dummy’s jackfour and two more defensive tricks.

East was in for a disappointment, though, for declarer won the spade continuation on the table and continued with the club 10. This went to the queen, king and eight. All that remained for South was to force out East’s nine and establish a second club trick. In fact South, ever the showman, led the club six to dummy’s four. On winning East’s return, he cashed everything else before scoring the club three at trick 13, dropping East’s two.

South’s play works whenever East has started with four clubs including the ace, queen and two. And the action and play to the first few tricks had marked East with both high clubs. On a different day you might prefer initially to lead a low club towards the jack-10.

Against four hearts West leads a low spade to East’s jack. As South, what is your plan to make 10 tricks?

In order to make four hearts, you need two club tricks. So, unless East has a singleton club ace, you will need clubs to be 3-2. Best is to win the spade king, cash the spade ace and ruff a spade low. Next you should lead a club from dummy. When the club ace fails to appear from East, your club king will win the trick.

Be careful! There is a winning defense if you continue with a low club next. West will win the trick with the jack and switch to the diamond jack. You must ruff the second round of diamonds and play a club, but East will win and force you again with the diamond ace. You must ruff again, and now West will eventually score a trump trick to set the contract.

The way around this disagreeable outcome is to continue with the club queen instead of a low club at trick five. East will win the club ace and does best to cash the diamond ace, but will probably exit with a spade, hoping that he can promote a trump trick in West’s hand. Instead, you will throw a diamond from hand and ruff with dummy’s trump nine. You will then draw trump and give up a club.

If East instead plays back a trump rather than the fourth spade, you draw trump and give up a club, having retained control.

Some people play South’s two no-trump response shows a balanced 13 to 15 points, with no four-card major, while others would bid three no-trump with this hand. Here when South shows his minimum game-force, North can raise to three notrump without considering any other action.

After a spade lead South can determine that to make game he needs a total of four tricks from the minor suits. Each suit will easily furnish three tricks but no more, so South will need to utilize both suits in some fashion to make his game.

If South follows a straightforward approach, the opponents are likely to win an ace, then knock out the spade queen. They will now be in position to take their second ace and run the spades, defeating the contract.

South must therefore try to steal one trick in clubs or diamonds. He can then switch to the other suit, and make his game by knocking out the second ace.

There is little chance to engineer a swindle in clubs, but the diamonds are a horse of a different color. South should lead the diamond jack at trick two, as though planning a finesse against the queen. Even though South owns the diamond queen, his opponents don’t know this.

As South hopes, West plays low on the diamond jack, since it is far from clear that he wants to stop South from losing a finesse to East’s presumed diamond queen.

Having thus stolen a diamond trick, South can shift his attention to clubs and ensure his nine tricks.

As declarer, it is a sound philosophy when in a good contract, to consider which distributions might lead to problems, then to plan how to deal with them.

With a real bust and three or four trumps North would have issued a second negative of three clubs, rather than raise directly. So South could jump to six spades – knowing that even if there was no heart control in dummy he could surely ruff his clubs good, if necessary.

When West led a top diamond, declarer saw that if either clubs or trumps broke, he would make at least 12 tricks. The real issue was how to cope with 4-1 clubs and 3-1 trumps. He might have no winning line if West had the critical trump length and short clubs; but what if East held the critical combination in the black-suits?

Declarer thoughtfully ruffed the diamond ace high, then cashed the club ace. When everyone followed, South now wanted to ensure that if East held a singleton club, he could be prevented from ruffing away a winner.

Accordingly, South next overtook his spade seven with dummy’s eight and led a club. Appreciating the position, East discarded – best, since had he ruffed in, South’s life would have been easy. South won the club king, then re-entered dummy by overtaking the trump nine with the 10.

Dummy’s third club was played, and again East declined to ruff, so South’s queen scored. The losing club was ruffed in dummy, the South hand was re-entered with a diamond ruff, and East’s last trump drawn for 12 tricks.

Someone once made the point to me that it isn’t the disasters one experiences at the table that lead to the partnership breakups, it is the post mortems. In a team game today’s deal produced an example of precisely how not to gain friends and influence people.

In one room, against four spades, West led the heart queen. When there is a singleton in dummy, many use third hand’s card as suit preference, rather than length-showing or attitude, though this is very much a matter for partnership agreement. When East contributed the nine under the queen, West continued with a low diamond. East rose with the ace and played back the two. Declarer played low, the king won, and it was all over for the defense.

In the other room East thought more deeply and realized that the first diamond lead must come from the East hand. So East overtook his partner’s heart queen at trick one and returned the diamond jack – surrounding North’s 10. It should not have mattered what South did; he was well on his way to losing three diamond tricks. However when East returned the jack, South covered with the queen without a care in the world. West put on the king, and then… switched to a club.

When they scored up the deal as a flat board, East, who had shown remarkable self-control till that point, asked his partner why he had shifted, and received the even more painful response that he didn’t think his partner was aware of the existence of that play.

Today’s deal is the third and final hand this month to come from Larry Cohen’s latest book: “Larry Teaches Declarer Play at Suit contracts”, most easily available from his website. Larry is one of the country’s leading teachers and writers. I recommend his latest book for intermediate players.

Against your six heart contract, West leads the diamond king. Both players have taken a slightly aggressive position, South to jump to four hearts (he was too good to open with that call), North to drive to slam with no club control.

The opening lead is unfortunate for you; without it, you could knock out the club ace, then throw a diamond on dummy’s club jack. But now, to pitch the diamond loser you must set up dummy’s spades.

You are very short of entries to accomplish this, so you should not draw trump prematurely, since dummy’s entries are in the trump suit itself. The plan is to take both top spades and trump a spade high. Only a 5-1 (or 6-0) spade break would cause a problem, in which case you may go down an extra trick but it will hardly affect your result, be it at pairs or teams.

Now the point is that even with 4-2 spades, declarer has the entries (because of the heart jack and eight) to trump two spades in hand. After that, you can in due course draw trump ending in dummy. On the fifth round of spades you can jettison your losing diamond and lose only to the club ace.

When North bid three diamonds after his partner transferred to hearts, it showed a nonminimum with heart fit. That got South to four hearts, against which West led his singleton trump. That turned out to be his least damaging lead.

Declarer next led out a second high trump, discovering the three-one break. At that point he ran the club jack to West, who found himself endplayed. If he returned a club, declarer would get a free finesse. If West, instead, returned a diamond, declarer would let it ride around to his queen. West chose the least of the evils by leading ace and another spade.

Declarer could now infer that West has the missing club honor or he would surely have exited in clubs. He could reach dummy with a third round of trump, to ruff the spade jack in hand. Next he cashed the club ace, and threw West in once more with a third round of clubs.

Caught in a second end-play, West could no longer get out safely. If he led another spade, dummy would ruff, while South discarded his losing diamond. It is for this reason that dummy must still hold a trump when the end-play takes place. This in turn explains why declarer left a trump outstanding at trick four when he took the first club finesse.

Since West knew that a spade return would be absolutely hopeless, he had finally to open up diamonds in the four-card ending, and South could run the lead round to his queen and claim 10 tricks.

Today, you will be faced with two problems. First play three no-trump on the given hands after the lead of the spade jack. Then play the same contract, but with the club eight not the seven in hand.

With the given cards, your best chance comes from the clubs. Cash the club ace and continue the suit, if both follow. Even if East has king-jack-third, and shifts to a low heart you will simply play low from hand. Then the best the defense can do is to take two heart tricks and two clubs.

But say East had four clubs, as here. Now if you play a second club the defense will win the race to establish West’s spades. So your only hope for a ninth trick is in the heart suit.

Best is to lead a low heart towards the jack. This works when East has the ace or West has the heart queen. Here, West will rise with the queen and play a spade. You will win and force out the heart ace by playing a low heart to dummy’s jack. As indicated above, if East had the heart queen you would need him also to have the heart ace.

So what difference does the club eight make? You can ensure your contract by leading a club toward the queen initially. If East has four clubs he does best to win and return a spade. You win and lead a club to the nine, then use diamond entries to dummy to finesse in clubs and establish the suit for your nine tricks.