When South invites game at his second turn, North accepts the invitation, of course. After West’s top diamond lead, some Easts might simply encourage the lead – but better is to overtake with the queen, perhaps planning to shift to clubs. Naturally South wins trick one; what next?

They say that many homeless bridge players are walking Charing Cross Embankment — because they forgot to draw trump. However, just as many are walking the streets of New York because they drew trump too soon.

South needs two spade tricks to make his game. If he draws three rounds of trump and then starts the spades, the opponents will duck the first spade and take the second, and the rest of dummy’s suit will be shut out.

South instead takes just the king and queen of trumps, leaving dummy’s trump ace as the entry to the spades. Then he leads out the spade king, on which West gives count, letting East duck. When East wins the second spade he cashes his high diamond, and now West gives high suit preference to tell his partner to play a third spade for the trump promotion. If West had the club ace but no promotable trump, he would follow low on the diamond, letting East play a club through. Again, unless East ducks, declarer will be home.

As it is, a third spade from East promotes the heart jack, and dooms the contract. Maybe a more deceptive line for declarer is to draw just one trump and lead a spade to the jack.

Against four spades West leads out the diamond king and ace. You ruff, then cash the ace and king of trumps. However, East discards a diamond on the second round of trump. How will you play from this point?

In abstract, the best way to go after clubs is to finesse twice, which will yield an extra trick from the A-J-10 so long as East holds at least one of the missing honors. However, if you score the three heart honors separately you will have only one entry to dummy to take two club finesses, which may not suffice for your purposes. Curiously, though, if you make three tricks in clubs, you only need two in hearts. The way to maximize your chances is to sacrifice one trick in hearts to gain a second entry to dummy. There is one more point: since you don’t want West to ruff the second round of clubs, you should concede a trump to West’s queen at trick five.

Obviously, West will exit with a third round of diamonds. You ruff this in hand, play the heart king to the ace and lead a low club to the 10. West will win and play yet another diamond. After ruffing this, you will cross again to dummy, this time with the heart queen. You will lead the club jack next, running it if East follows with a low card.

This plan will always give you three club tricks whenever East has a club honor. No other approach offers the same overall chance of success.

The first round of the 2016 Vanderbilt Knockout Teams produced an intriguing example of the unsafety play.

You declare four spades on a low diamond lead, after an artificial auction has made South declarer. You might reject the finesse at trick one, I suppose. But you don’t. The diamond goes to the 10 and your queen. With overtricks on the horizon it would be easy to relax – but don’t!

At the table, declarer carefully cashed the spade ace to guard against a 4-0 trump break, Success! West had all four missing spades. A spade to the 10 and queen was followed by a club to the ace and another club to the queen.

East won the club king and got out with a heart to South’s ace. A heart ruff was followed by a club ruff by South. Disaster! West overruffed and exited in hearts.

Now, even if the diamond finesse was working, declarer couldn’t take it. But imagine the diamond finesse is wrong, the spades are 4-0, the clubs 5-2 offside. You are still cold!

Win the diamond queen, cash the spade king to find the bad news (the “safety” unsafety play). Then play the club ace and another club to the queen and king. Win the heart return, cross to the diamond ace and ruff a club with the spade nine.

West overruffs and the defense have a diamond to cash, but they can’t stop you ruffing a club with the spade ace, then finessing in trumps for 10 tricks.

When South opened one spade, North could not jump to four spades immediately, since that would have emphasized distribution not high-cards. So he manufactured a two diamond response, and when South elected to rebid two spades, North jumped to the spade game, expecting a nine-card fit. Thus the cold three no-trump contract was missed.

When West led a trump, South decided to play to ruff a club in dummy to protect against a bad break in that suit. Winning with the spade ace, he tried the effect of ace and another club. When East won and returned a trump declarer took it and played a third club, hoping that if there was a bad split, the hand that won would be out of spades. Alas for declarer, East won and was able to return the last defensive trump, ensuring the defeat of the contract.

When South complained about his bad luck, his partner was unsympathetic; can you see why? So long as all South’s side-suit aces and kings stood up, declarer had a guaranteed line to take 10 tricks, by ruffing in the long (not the short) trump hand. He can win the trump lead in dummy, then cash the red-suit winners, followed by ruffing a diamond high. Now he plays the second heart, which the defenders do best to win, to return a trump.

Declarer wins in dummy, ruffs a heart high, leads a club to dummy’s ace, then ruffs dummy’s last heart with his last high trump. That brings South to nine tricks, and dummy’s master trump represents the 10th trick.

This deal came up in a regional tournament earlier this year. Let’s consider it on the most challenging defense of the club jack lead, which says nothing about holding a higher non-touching honor.

Best is to duck the trick in dummy, win the ace, draw trump then play on hearts. If West can win the heart ace, you may have to guess clubs. But as the cards lie, when East wins the heart ace he can do no better than shift to diamonds. Now you rise with the ace, eliminate the hearts and play a second diamond, hoping it will be East who wins the trick.

The only defense is for West to win the diamond king and play a top club through. At this point you appear to have a guess to make the contract: if clubs are 3-3 with the king wrong you cannot succeed, but if West started life with precisely the doubleton J-10 of clubs you must duck. It might also appear that you have a guess when the cards lie as they do in the diagram, with East having begun with the doubleton club king – but that is an optical illusion.

In the ending you will reach, you can’t go down whatever you do. Even if you misguess and cover the club queen, since East’s club king is doubleton, he is endplayed when he wins the trick. He has no club left to play, and whether he leads a diamond or a heart, you ruff in dummy and pitch your remaining club loser from hand.

In today’s hand, at his second turn South felt he had a little too much to sign off at two hearts, and when North also took an aggressive position, the delicate game was reached. Nonetheless, the competitive auction should have given declarer a blueprint for the play.

Against four hearts West led his singleton diamond. Declarer rose with dummy’s ace, and with the intention of ruffing a club in dummy, he next played dummy’s club queen. East rose with the ace and continued with the diamond king, on which West pitched a spade. Declarer ruffed the subsequent high diamond with the 10 and West thoughtfully discarded another spade. The club king was cashed and a third club was ruffed in dummy. Then came the heart nine – and again West correctly withheld the trump ace, since the dummy’s five of trumps would have protected declarer from being forced by a fourth round of clubs.

These maneuvers ensured the defeat of South’s game; if declarer played another trump, West would win and force him with a club, to promote a second trump trick for the defense. And if South played on spades, West could ruff the third round, with the heart ace still to come.

So what went wrong? South should have known that West had started with exactly four spades, and therefore East held three. So, South’s correct sequence of plays was to cash his three spade tricks after winning the diamond ace, before West could take any discards. Had South done so, he would have been home free.

While three no-trump has nine top tricks on today’s deal, it was hard for South to reach that contract when missing a club stopper, but with unbiddable extra values. One can see the argument for temporizing with three hearts over the three-club cuebid. But that might get you to no-trump the wrong way up, with a spade lead coming through the exposed king.

Anyway, South faced the prospect of making five diamonds after West led the club king. There was nothing to be gained by ducking the trick – West could have been endplayed later on in the hand, but that would not gain declarer a trick. Instead, the lead had to be taken with dummy’s ace.

Trumps were drawn by cashing the diamond ace, and dummy’s heart king won the third trick. Coming to hand with a trump, South discarded a club from dummy on the heart ace. now after ruffing the last heart in dummy, declarer crossed his fingers (hoping the club jack was to his left) and led a club.

West had to take this trick, of course, or else declarer would avoid losing a club altogether. But now he found himself endplayed, forced either to lead away from the spade ace or to concede a ruff and discard. Either way, declarer would hold his spade losers to one.

Discarding from club length in dummy on the heart ace, rather than pitching a spade, may appear somewhat counter-intuitive. North’s club is not a loser, since it can be ruffed, but getting rid of that card completes the endplay.

With his best hand for months at the rubber bridge table, South criticized his partner’s bidding as soon as he saw dummy.

When South produced his second slam try and North jumped to slam, South could not bid on. But North should have bid six clubs over the five diamond cuebid. Had North done so, and then bid six hearts over six diamonds to show the third round control, his side might have reached the respectable grand slam.

After winning West’s diamond king lead in six spades, South played two top trumps to reveal the bad break. Suddenly there were problems in even the small slam, and declarer continued with heart ace and a heart to the queen. He would have been home if the jack had fallen, or had the suit had divided 3-3, or even if East had had to follow to the second heart. However, as the cards lay, East was able to ruff the heart queen and eventually the defenders came to another trick.

Declarer had mistimed the play badly. With two entries to the table, he should have tackled the hearts by first leading towards the queen. When the second round is led from dummy, it would not have helped East to ruff a loser. So he must discard, and now after winning in hand, South re-enters dummy with the club king for another heart play. Again, East cannot profitably ruff, and dummy still has a trump left to take care of the losing heart. East can overruff but declarer has the rest.