This is a splendid declarer play problem from last summer’s Grand National Teams at the Chicago NABC.

In four spades East wins the diamond lead with the ace, and after some reflection, shifts to the club king. Play on. At the table, South won an early club and played the diamond king. When West ruffed, declarer was out of chances as the cards lay.

The winning line, even seeing all four hands, isn’t that easy to spot. The point is that it is easy to make the hand if diamonds break 5-2; your target is to bring home the game when diamonds are 6-1. After the diamond lead and club shift, you must duck the club king, to cut the defenders’ communications for a trump promotion. Win the next club and play the diamond 10 from hand.

If West pitches, discard dummy’s last club. After losing to the diamond queen, you plan to draw trump and pitch two hearts on the diamond king and the now established jack. If West ruffs in on the diamond 10, overruff, and draw two rounds of trump, ending in hand. The key is that you have forced West to ruff a loser, so now he is out of trump. That lets you cash the diamond king to pitch the club, and you will eventually be able to ruff dummy’s third heart in hand.

The see-saw effect, of determining which suits you want to ruff in hand or dummy, and the challenge of how to neutralize the opponents’ trumps seems especially attractive to me.

In the next deal from the Chicago NABC last summer, you would probably want to play six diamonds, but getting to a 4-4 minor-suit slam with a combined 29-count isn’t easy. And while slam certainly wasn’t cold, it offered the opportunity for careful play. A relatively natural sequence like this one, where North shows a balanced 12-14 then 4-5 in the minors, worked well.

In six diamonds, after a low club lead, it seemed logical to play a cross-ruff. South cashed the club ace, ruffed a club, went to the spade ace, and ruffed a second club, then cashed the high hearts. When East produced an ominous queen, that seemed unlikely to be a false-card unless he had the jack as well, so declarer changed tack. A spade ruff and a club ruff with a high trump reduced everyone down to four cards.

If you now decide to trust the opponents’ carding, you have a guaranteed route to 12 tricks. Play the diamond queen, then the spade jack. When West shows out, the diamond 10 and ace are good for two tricks.

But had West produced the spade queen, you would have discarded dummy’s club loser. In that case, if you believe his earlier carding, East will have started life with precisely 3=2=4=4 pattern. He would have to ruff his partner’s winner and lead into dummy’s diamond tenace at the end.

At the table the opportunity for brilliancy ended when West showed out on the spade, but the swing North-South scored for making slam was a perfectly acceptable alternative.

Last summer in the quarterfinal round of the Spingold Knockout Teams, the Lavazza team defeated their opponents handily. There were some bright spots for the losers, though, and Glenn Milgrim made a nice play on this deal.

You reach three no-trump by South after West has doubled the one club opener. A heart lead would doubtless have sunk you, since you would surely have misguessed the suit, but West, Zia Mahmood, led the spade queen.

Milgrim won, and elected to run the diamond eight, which lost to the 10 on his right. East, Giorgio Duboin, helpfully returned a heart, which was ducked to the 10. A club to the 10 and king was followed by a low heart to the queen and king, ducked by South.

Now the defenders reverted to spades. Milgrim covered the nine with the jack and Zia ducked, seeing that if he were to cover, he would eventually fall victim to a simple spade-diamond squeeze after two clubs and a heart were cashed.

In the seven-card ending Milgrim now cashed the ace and queen of clubs, compelling West to pitch the heart jack. Then the heart ace forced West to let go of his low spade. Finally, a diamond towards dummy gave West the option of splitting his honors, or ducking and letting the nine of diamonds score cheaply. When Zia covered the second diamond, Milgrim won in dummy and led a spade. West now had to win and at trick 12 was compelled to lead into the diamond tenace, to concede nine tricks.

At the Summer NABC in Chicago last August this deal came up in a Spingold Knockout Teams match.

You play in three no-trump with a surplus of high cards but, alas, without nine tricks. After a heart lead, you would have to guess diamonds, of course, since the opponents would have already established the danger suit. You would have no reason not to play for the drop in diamonds – unless you thought East had five-plus hearts, and maybe not even then. However, West actually led his fourth-highest spade, the three. This went to the six, queen, and ace. Does that alter the odds?

I don’t know for sure, but the spade lead suggested West had four spades and no more than four hearts. At trick two, declarer tried the club queen, then a club to the ace. West followed up the line in clubs, using upside-down signals, his second club suggesting an initial holding of a doubleton. Meanwhile East echoed in clubs, looking like a man with five.

All the clues strongly suggested West had diamond length, not shortage. If you know East has even one more card in the sidesuits than West, the finesse in diamonds is even money. Here East appeared to have five cards in each of hearts and clubs, and a doubleton spade, thus a singleton diamond.

On balance it feels right to play the diamond ace and a diamond to the jack; and so it proved. This was worth a game swing when three no-trump went down at the other table.

This deal from the von Zedtwitz Life Master Pairs in Chicago last summer presented a typical matchpoint choice of games.

Three no-trump needs the opponents’ spades to be 4-4, less than a 50 percent chance. Five clubs needs the clubs to break — call it a 70 percent contract. That leaves the Goldilocks contract of four hearts. Not too low, not too high – just right.

Incidentally, had East not doubled two spades, South would have had a very awkward call. As it was, though, he could pass and let his partner show delayed support. Against four hearts West led the spade king then the spade eight (in case declarer had a doubleton spade jack and his partner overtook the spade queen). South ruffed the third spade, and cashed the heart king, then the ace and queen. What next?

Playing a fourth trump would be undignified if West had a spade left to cash, but playing on clubs would require West to follow to three or more clubs. Which line is better?

Playing the fourth trump looks best to me. It loses only if West has precisely four hearts, four spades and three clubs (if he has precisely 4=4=3=2 shape, nothing works). Another big advantage comes if West is 4=4=4=1 or 3=4=5=1, since playing the fourth heart now saves the undertrick. Also, East’s double of two spades as a passed hand is surely more likely to be based on a five-card suit than only four.

However, at the table, declarer chose to play on clubs and went down a trick.

All the deals this week come from last year’s Summer NABC, held in Chicago. It looks normal to reach four spades with the North-South cards here, but after a top heart lead, how should you plan the play?

The first thing you should do is duck the heart. Maybe West will shift to clubs? When West continues hearts, you win and draw trump while eliminating the hearts.

At this point you could take the club finesse, then lead a diamond to the king. But you can do better. You must first lead the club queen from dummy. If East follows low you can assume that the king is misplaced for you, since would anyone be able to duck smoothly duck from king-doubleton or tripleton? I think not.

Accordingly, you rise with the club ace and return the nine. If your reading of the position is right, West might duck the club king, even if he shouldn’t. But if he started life with the doubleton club king, he will win, and simultaneously be endplayed. He cannot lead a black card, and a heart will give you a ruff and sluff to let you pitch a diamond from hand, so he must exit in diamonds.

Now the auction should persuade you to play low from dummy, playing East for the diamond ace not the queen. If East has competed to two hearts with three small hearts and two highcard points, more power to his elbow!

Mark Dahl, playing with Tom Kniest, played four spades exactly this way to make 10 tricks.

Although aggressive competitive bidding can prevent the opponents from reaching their best contract, it can also sometimes simplify the play.

Today’s deal, from London’s high-standard Lederer Memorial Trophy, is a good example. It was provided to me under the seal of the confessional by the guilty South, who shall remain unnamed.

The defense started with four rounds of hearts, ending with East on lead. Not wishing to commit herself to a minor-suit discard, South threw all of dummy’s spades. When East switched to a spade and South won her ace, what should she have thrown from the dummy?

West’s misguided super-light take-out double should have given declarer all the clues she needed. West has at most 9 HCP, so is heavy favorite to hold a real three-suiter with at most one club. Thus declarer can be sure of four diamond tricks. Correct is to discard a club from dummy and play a diamond to dummy’s jack. When East plays low South can cross back to hand with a club to the ace and play a diamond to the nine. If West started with Q-10-x-x and inserts an honor on the second round, declarer can cross back again with clubs and take a second diamond finesse to make her game.

So the light double allowed declarer to make her game? No. South discarded a diamond from the dummy on the spade ace and now had to go down. Worse still, in the other room, where East/ West were silent, West led a spade. Now declarer had an easy nine tricks.

Hands from team matches where a swing comes from a different line of play or defense often yield interesting discussion points. Today’s deal saw identical auctions, with South declaring three no-trump on a fourth-highest spade lead to East’s ace. Yet one table made their game, and one table went down.

Where the defense prevailed, East captured the spade with his ace and shifted to the diamond queen, ensuring four tricks in that suit whether South covered or not. When West complimented his partner, East remarked that this was hardly challenging as after South followed with the spade two at the first trick, the three of spades lead could only be fourth highest from four, marking declarer with four spades. Since the clubs were an obvious danger, his logical play at trick two was the winning one.

And that is the point of the hand; in the second room, South diagnosed the danger before he played from dummy to trick one. He could see that if he was going to win the first trick, life rated to be very straightforward, but if East had the spade ace he might need to be deflected from the winning defense. So he craftily followed with the spade nine from hand to trick one under the ace.

East now hoped his partner had five spades, and that continuing spades might allow West to cash out the spades or at least set up the suit. After a spade continuation, South played low from hand and emerged with 10 tricks at the end of the day.

Today’s deal shows that defensive signaling may be critical for each member of the partnership to plan the defense. But an intelligent declarer can listen in on the signals and can sometimes take advantage of the information conveyed to make an ‘impossible’ contract.

When West led a top diamond against four spades, East followed with a small card, and West sensibly shifted to a club. Declarer could see that he needed to accomplish three things: he needed to draw trump, set up the hearts to pitch his club losers, and ruff away his losing diamonds.

Accordingly, he won the club king and led a heart to the 10, king and ace. Back came a second club, so South won it in dummy and needed to work out how to bring home his game, given that West appeared to have two hearts. He decided that he needed West to have 2=2=6=3 distribution. So he ruffed a heart to hand, cashed the spade ace and king, then ruffed a diamond. Next he cashed the heart queen and jack, pitching clubs as East impotently followed suit, while all West could do was discard diamonds. Although East could trump in on the fifth heart, declarer could get rid of his last diamond loser and claim the rest.

The key was that West felt obliged to signal honestly on the first round of hearts to his partner. Had declarer believed that hearts were three-three, he might have cashed two top spades, ruffed a diamond to dummy, and tried to run the hearts.