Against four spades, reached after a slightly aggressive jump raise by North, West leads the diamond jack, covered by the queen and king. What is your plan to make 10 tricks?

The contract requires some friendly breaks. The black suits must break 3-2, and it also requires that the defenders cannot promote a trump by playing on diamonds. The full deal needs to be similar to the layout here.

After winning the diamond ace, if you cross to table to with a trump and lead a club to the king, you will fail in your contract whenever West has the ace, because the defense of repeated red-suit leads will leave you without enough entries to establish the clubs.

A better plan is to rely on clubs being 3-2 and simply to lead a low club out of your hand at trick two. On this layout East will win the trick with the 10 and cash his side’s diamond trick. After trumping the red-suit continuation, ruff a club with dummy’s 10. Then cross back to hand with the queen of spades to ruff a second club with the king, thereby establishing the club suit.

Now play dummy’s last trump to your ace, to run the club suit. West can take his nine of trumps whenever he likes, but that will be his side’s last defensive trick. All you will lose is a trump, a diamond and a club. You managed to create a trump loser, but saved yourself two entries to hand in the process.

Against six diamonds West leads the spade king, and East signals an odd number of spades. At trick two, West shift to the heart queen. What is the best approach to make a 12th trick?

Even if you can find the club queen, you must establish a long club to take care of your slow heart loser. After winning the heart shift in hand with the king and drawing trump, you could cash the club ace in the hope that West has a singleton club queen: if this proved successful you would have the four club tricks you need.

However, if the cards lie as shown in the diagram, the only successful approach here is to win the second trump in dummy (and when West shows out the singleton club queen becomes less likely) then lead the club jack. East can do no better than cover it with his queen.

You will then win the club ace, lead the club four to the 10, followed by the club two, to finesse the six. The play will be equivalent if East ducks the first club.

As West will by now be marked with an original with 5-5-1-2 shape, you will know to finesse on the third round of clubs. This line produces a fourth club trick whenever West started with a doubleton such as: 9-8, 9-7 or 8-7.

Note that there is no point in playing West for a doubleton club queen. While you would not have a club loser, you would still have one in hearts.

In today’s deal you might consider what you would lead as West after the given sequence to six no-trump. Your knowledge of the bad break in spades would normally suggest a passive opening lead (a heart or club, to taste). If you were looking at a spade holding such as jack-third, you might well go for an aggressive choice. In general, any time the opponents follow a quantitative auction to game or slam, you try to judge whether the cards lie well or badly. The worse they lie, the more passive your defensive strategy should be.

Be that as it may, at the table, West chose a top diamond and was soon taught a sharp lesson. Declarer won the diamond ace and played a diamond straight back. West put up his nine, so declarer took dummy’s king and led another diamond, to build the 10 into a trick. West took his jack, and exited with a passive fourth diamond, instead of a heart, which might perhaps have given the defenders a chance.

Declarer won the diamond 10, then cashed his top spades to discover the bad news. Next he played a club to dummy’s queen and took dummy’s spade winners, pitching hearts from hand. Meanwhile, East kept his clubs, so had to bare his heart king.

When declarer came to hand with a club to the ace, and cashed his remaining club winner West also had to throw a heart, to preserve his spade winner. Declarer discarded the spade from dummy and the heart seven took trick 13.

Today’s deal saw South double a weak two and North respond three clubs, natural invitational and value showing. With a weaker hand North would have bid two no-trump as a puppet to three clubs, planning to pass with long clubs or correct to his long red suit if he had one. This convention is known as Lebensohl and originally applied only after a one no-trump opener, but has had its use extended to today’s sequence.

After this start South bid his hearts, used keycard when his partner cooperated for that suit, and drove to seven no-trump, knowing he rated to be able to claim the contract at trick one.

As it turned out though, when dummy went down with surprisingly weak clubs, the contract required careful play. It looks obvious to play West, the non-preempter, for long clubs, but South went the extra mile. He won the spade lead, cashed the top hearts, pitching spades from dummy, and now made the key play of the diamond king and queen. Had both hands followed, declarer would have started clubs by leading a top honor from hand. When East discarded on the second diamond he was almost sure to have begun with precisely 6=2=1=4 pattern. So declarer led a club to the ace and back towards his hand, putting in the nine when East played low. Had East split his honors, it would have been easy to cross back to the diamond ace to take the marked club finesse.

The annual House of Lords versus the House of Commons match features a contest between talented amateurs. As you might expect, the quality of bridge is mixed. But some of the deals have been pre-selected, to give the players the opportunity to shine by demonstrating good technique, knowledge of the laws of probability, or even by revealing sound partnership understandings. It was into that latter class that today’s deal fell.

All roads would seem to lead to three no-trump here, probably via a two no-trump opening. West has a natural lead of the spade 10, especially as no attempt was made to locate a major suit fit. Declarer can count on seven sure tricks – five in clubs and two in spades. Should he put up the spade jack?

Yes indeed; if dummy’s jack holds the first trick, there will be no problem in setting up a trick in diamonds for the ninth trick. But the jack loses to the queen, and declarer wins the king. The natural suit for declarer to turn to is diamonds, and here is where the defenders have to be on their toes. When South advances the diamond king, West must duck. And East must signal his distribution clearly, by following with the seven, suggesting an even number, so that West knows to take his ace at his next turn. The point is that if East has two diamonds, South has four, and a second hold-up would be pointless. If East has four, winning the second diamond trick holds South to just one trick in the suit.

In today’s contract, declarer had bid the hand intelligently to the right contract, but when dummy came down he thought the route to nine tricks was a safe one. Unfortunately for him, he tackled his suits in the wrong order, and so he failed in his mission.

Against three no-trump West led the spade three and South appreciated that nine tricks were easily available – in addition to the four top tricks in the majors, four extra tricks could very likely be developed in diamonds and one further trick in clubs.

So on winning the opening lead with dummy’s spade ace, declarer called for a diamond. East won, and returned a spade. The jack lost, and South was forced to win the spade continuation. When the club finesse also lost, the game was sunk.

If declarer had appreciated that spades could not be continued to advantage from the West hand, he would have taken the club finesse at trick two. It loses, but no return by West is damaging. Say a heart comes back. Best is to play low from dummy, win the jack with the ace, then set about diamonds. Now, so long as diamond break no worse than 3-1, (when the defenders could duck the diamond ace three times) nine tricks are there.

Once again, it would have paid to make a detailed plan when dummy went down. As declarer you have every right to take your time to do this – even to the extent of discouraging dummy from playing the spade ace until you are ready.

Today’s deal from the qualifying segment of the European Senior Teams saw two nice endplays. In one case North declared four spades. On the lead of the heart three, declarer Gunnar Elmroth jumped up with the ace and continued with the heart queen, taking a successful ruffing finesse to discard a club. The heart jack followed, and West ducked again so declarer’s last club was discarded. East ruffed in and switched to a diamond, letting West win the diamond king and try to cash the club ace. Declarer ruffed, played a trump to the queen, and ruffed a club. Then he cashed the spade ace to discover he had a sure trump loser. When he crossed to dummy with a diamond to the ace and led a diamond from dummy, West could only discard. Declarer took his queen to play another diamond, throwing West in to collect two tricks from the spade tenace. Contract made.

In the other room David Kendrick received the club king lead against four hearts. A trump went round to declarer’s nine, who then cashed the heart ace and played the queen, putting West back on lead with the king. West cashed the club ace and returned his last club to declarer’s queen.

Kendrick next cashed the diamond ace and ran all his hearts, and the last trump squeezed West in spades and diamonds. When that player kept the diamond king, declarer could simply overtake the spade queen with the king to claim his 10 tricks for a push. West had needed to play back a spade earlier on to break up declarer’s squeeze.

Have a look at today’s problem, from the 2015 European Open Championships. When the diamond four was led against six no-trump, declarer tried to preserve his entry to hand by rising with dummy’s ace. Whether or not this was right in theory, when East followed with the jack, declarer may have started to regret his decision.

Declarer next cashed the clubs, learning West had begun with one and East with four. West discarded two diamonds and two hearts, East threw a spade. On the run of the spades declarer discovered that West had started with two and East with five.

In the four-card ending as South cashed dummy’s last spade he had to decide if it was East or West held the heart ace. If the former, South should pitch a diamond from hand and play a heart to the king. If West had the heart ace, South had to discard a heart from hand and throw West in with a heart, forcing that player to lead into the diamond tenace.

So who has the heart ace and why? Well, assuming East is a competent defender he would not have discarded a spade on the fifth club if he had the heart ace. That way he could have defeated the contract by retaining his spade winner for the three-card ending. So West is favorite to hold the heart ace.

Richard Ritmeijer for team Orange Red declared six no-trump and found the winning play in the four-card ending. This was only a small pick-up, though, since his opponents had bid and made six clubs.