At the Dyspeptics Club East has often disparagingly referred to his task on defense as being like Hercules fighting Cerberus, the three-headed dog. Except in this case he considers the third opposing head to be that of his partner.

After East-West had competed accurately to five hearts, then let North play five spades, one can hardly blame West for leading a top heart rather than a club. East thoughtfully overtook with his ace and shifted to a club to South’s jack and West’s king.

South had little option but to win the ace, draw the trump, then ruff his heart in hand and exit with a club. As it turned out, West could have won the club nine, but he saw no reason to waste such a valuable commodity, and so East was forced to take the trick.

When he exited with a diamond, declarer played low. Now West went from penny-wise to pound-foolish, wasting his jack and letting declarer bring in the diamonds for no loser. Contract made.

No stranger to the world of hostile post-mortems, South expansively informed the world how lucky he had been. Perhaps he was hoping to get a rise out of East – but that player remained curiously silent. Can you see why?

While West’s defense was clearly inferior, if East had counted out the hand he would have given declarer a ruff-sluff after winning the second club, and taken his partner off the hook. Declarer can ruff the third club in either hand, but he will still be left with a diamond loser whatever he does.

How should the defense go against four spades in today’s deal?

When West leads the diamond king, East can see that it is possible that if declarer has the heart jack in addition to his other assets, but a 5-4-3-1 pattern, then the defenders must cash their three diamond winners on the go, or the third diamond gets away on dummy’s winning club. In that case he would need to overtake the diamond king and return the suit.

But the actual lie of the cards looks slightly more likely. Here East must duck the first diamond, and West must not continue the suit. Instead he can see from his own hand that the defenders must prevent heart ruffs, so he must shift to a trump, leaving his partner with a re-entry for a second trump play.

Declarer wins the trump shift on table and leads a heart to the queen. West takes his king and plays a low diamond to East’s ace. Now a second trump from East leaves South a trick short; he has eight winners, and a ninth will comes from a heart ruff, but there is no possibility of another trick against sound defense.

It is always challenging to shift to trump in this sort of position. The risk exists that you are chopping up partner’s trump holding, whereas if left to his own devices declarer would lose an additional trick. However, the knowledge that declarer needs heart ruffs in dummy means that the trick will be favorite to come back one way or another.

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.