The final contract in today’s deal was six hearts by South – rather ambitious you might say, given the two missing keycards, not to mention the further hurdle of the bad club break.

When South heard his partner show heart fit with short spades, he decided to use Blackwood – far from unreasonably. Now North thought he had to catch up to show his void, though it might have been more discreet simply to answer the question his partner had asked.

East might have made a Lightner double of six hearts for the club lead, but he was not sure where his side’s second trick was going to come from. When he passed, West looked no further than his spade sequence on opening lead. South was unimpressed by the dummy, but that did not stop him giving the contract his best shot. He ruffed the opening lead, ostentatiously dropping his spade ace as he did so, took a heart finesse, then ruffed the spade king and repeated the heart finesse.

After drawing the last trump South was confident that his diamond loser was about to go on the clubs, but the 4-0 club break brought him back to earth.

Still, South did not give up; he cashed his remaining trumps, reducing down to the spade queen and three clubs, plus the diamond jack. West had to keep his diamond ace and three clubs so could similarly keep only one spade. With dummy down to two diamonds and three clubs, South cashed his spade queen and exited in diamonds, and West had to win and concede the rest.

Many of Mike Lawrence’s books on play and defense would surely rank amongst the best ever written on bridge. He has recently written “Tips on bidding” and “Tips on competitive bidding’, but today’s deal comes from the third, “Tips on Cardplay.”

The correct defense to four hearts starts with the lead of the spade king, on which East plays the queen. The queen here shows the jack and tells West that he can underlead the ace if he wishes. It is not, repeat, not, a suit preference signal. West does want to put East in, so he leads a spade to East’s jack. If East leads a diamond now, West will score a diamond trick along with the club ace, to set the game.

But how East should know to return a diamond and not a club? Answer: West will tell East which suit to shift to by leading a suit preference card at the second trick. If West wants a club return, he will lead the spade two. If West wants a diamond return, he will continue with the spade nine, as here. So East should finds the killing diamond switch at trick three.

Why is the play to the second trick suit preference, but not at trick one? A tough question, but in essence, on the first play in any suit if continuation makes sense, the basic signal is first attitude, then count if attitude is already defined. However, where your holding is precisely defined and you have a choice of winners or losers to play on subsequent tricks, that is where suit preference kicks in.

Even the most far-sighted of defenders can’t see one another’s hands, but they can often show precisely what they have, so long as they put together a sensible suite of agreements.

A sound agreement is that if you lead an anti-system high honor – should your normal style be to lead the king from A-K-x, then if you lead the ace and follow with the king — it shows the bare ace-king. Equally, if you lead the ace from ace-king, then switch to another suit, that promises a singleton.

This agreement is critical to defeating three hearts here, which looks a solid enough contract – the only worrying feature being possible ruffs for defense.

This pair of defenders were playing king from ace-king, so when West led the diamond ace East was immediately alerted to the possibility of there being a possible ruff for the defenders in either diamonds or spades.

Declarer’s concerns were soon realized when, at trick two, West switched to the spade three. East won with the ace, and although South tried to muddy the waters by following with the five, concealing the deuce, East was not fooled. West would have cashed both his diamonds if he had a doubleton, so his short suit had to be spades.

He returned his lowest spade, the four, suit preference for clubs. West ruffed, and trusting his partner’s signal, underled his club king. East won with the ace and returned another spade. West’s second ruff saw the contract drift one down.

Of course if West tries to cash a second diamond, declarer waltzes home with 10 tricks.

The original journalist who reported this deal was Dick Cummings of Australia.

He focused on it as a beautiful defensive hand, but there may be an even more subtle point in the play for declarer.

At the table, South was at the helm in four spades. The opening lead was the heart nine to the 10, followed by the heart ace. Since East had a choice of high hearts to lead, his selection of the very largest was designed to suggest a preference for the higher of the unbid suits, namely he liked diamonds more than clubs.

South ruffed the second heart with the spade jack, and West made the second thoughtful play for the defense when he discarded. Rather than cross to dummy to tackle trumps from the board, declarer concealed the position in the minors by playing the trump ace, followed by the 10. West won his spade queen, and switched accurately to a diamond. Now a third heart by East forced declarer to ruff with his last intermediate spade, which promoted the trump eight to the setting trick.

Very nicely defended but both South at the table and Cummings in his report had missed the point that declarer should have discarded a diamond at trick two.

This play is extremely unlikely to cost a trick, but it has the effect of cutting communications between the defenders’ hands. When West wins the spade queen, he can no longer reach his partner for the play of the third heart.

There are some hands where it may be better to be in a grand slam, or a safe game, than in a small slam. This might apply on a hand where the defenders establish a winner at once, and declarer needs a finesse to make either 11 or 13 tricks. Today’s deal has something in common with that idea, but South missed the point, and it proved fatal to his slam.

Most North-South pairs stopped at three no-trump here, but one pair imaginatively ventured into six hearts. West led the diamond queen, and declarer won and crossed to the heart 10. He took the spade finesse successfully, cashed the spade ace and ruffed a spade on the table. There were not enough entries to hand to ruff the last spade and draw trump, so South followed with three rounds of trump. East discarded two diamonds, and the 4-2 club break left South a trick short.

While the spade finesse was necessary (since five club tricks, four trumps and two aces adds up only to 11 tricks) South’s line of play stood to yield either 11 or 13 tricks, never 12.

To give himself the chance of some added pressure if the clubs do not break, South must duck the opening lead, to correct the timing for a squeeze. West can do no better than lead a second top diamond. Now declarer finesses in spades, cashes the ace and ruffs a spade, then runs the trump. On the fourth heart, East has to unguard either spades or clubs, and declarer has the rest.

Even at favorable vulnerability I’d require a better hand than South’s on which to overcall at the two level. However, South can catch up at his next turn and reach a sensible game.

Against four hearts East wins the first trick with the spade queen and returns a low trump; plan the play. It is clear that East has three black winners, and he must be expecting to win those tricks. Given that West is clearly short in spades, why isn’t East trying to find that setting trick in the form of a trump, by cashing his three black suit winners and then leading a third spade, hoping that West can ruff higher than the dummy? Such a plan would work if West had any trump honor.

Assuming that East is a competent player, there can be only one reason for his failure to try this plan: East knows that it cannot possibly work. East must hold the heart queen-jack himself, and he therefore knows that his partner probably cannot over-ruff the dummy.

If East had led three rounds of spades, his partner would have had to make it obvious to you that East had the heart queen-jack. Now South would be warned that two trump finesse were necessary to pick up the suit.

So East is leading trump to force South to make up his mind before all of the facts are in. However, South must realize why East is avoiding the obvious defense, and therefore South must play low from hand and run the lead to dummy’s 10.

When South opens one notrump, North can see that his side’s combined count is not enough to think seriously about a slam. He might have come to a different conclusion without his values in the short suits, but as it is, he should be satisfied to settle for the no-trump game.

After the initial spade lead, the fact that South has a doubleton spade in each hand means he can only count on winning two spades and four clubs. Hence, he needs to develop three tricks in the red suits.

The diamonds should provide the necessary tricks, unless East has four or more diamonds headed by the A-10. There is no danger if West has such a diamond holding, since South will eventually be able to finesse in the suit, using dummy’s diamond nine.

To guard against all the dangerous diamond breaks — except the bare ace with West — South must lead diamonds from the dummy. East ducks, since playing the ace would permit South to preserve his king and jack. South wins the first diamond with the king and can then return to dummy to lead another diamond.

Once again, (as the cards lie) East must play low, and South wins with the jack. West’s discard reveals the bad break, and South now knows that he cannot develop the diamonds in time to make the contract.

However, he can now switch his attention to hearts, and by leading that suit, he will come to his ninth trick — just in time.

This column does not always agree with the experts. In today’s deal, from the semi-finals of the NEC teams I was shocked to see two of the four Souths opening two clubs here. Both players ran into competition and were forced to describe their hand as an equal two-suiter, and in one case North ended up in six clubs (down like a stone), in one case six diamonds.

Of course six clubs isn’t much worse than six diamonds – since if clubs are 5-0, surely West could double six diamonds by North for the lead. Not today, apparently, since where North played six diamonds, West didn’t double, and East tried to cash the spade ace instead of leading a club. Since six clubs had gone four down, that was a 15 IMP swing to the eventual winners of the tournament.

In our other match, both tables managed the auction more intelligently. They reached six diamonds from the South seat, their sides’ best contract. Both Wests tried to put their partner in for the club ruff. One West led the spade nine, finding his partner with the spade ace – but that was not enough today. In the other room Sjoert Brink of the Netherlands led a low heart away from his ace. Bas Drijver could win his heart king, and then had no trouble in working out why his partner had such a degree of urgency to put him on lead. He played a club to give his partner the ruff, for a huge pickup for his team.

Today’s deal comes from the 2009 bridge match between the Lords and The Commons. It features a play that might be easy to miss at the table in the heat of the battle.

West leads the diamond king and ace against four spades before switching to the club 10. The normal’ if unthinking line of play is simply to draw trump and take the heart finesse. Can you do better?

Declarer should realize that with at least one sure heart loser, there is no reason to make the standard play in hearts. Try this approach instead: win the club switch, draw trump, then cash your club winners, ending in the dummy. Now play a heart, planning to duck the two, going up with the ace in any other case, then crossing to dummy in trump to lead a heart to the queen if East plays low. That way, if East has the heart king, you will make the same 10 tricks as you would have done had you finessed.

However, where you gain is when West has king-doubleton, as here. West will win his heart king, but will now be endplayed into giving you a ruff and discard. When he plays a minor suit, you will ruff in dummy, discarding your remaining heart loser from your hand.

One other wrinkle; if East follows with the jack on the second round, you do have the option of ducking, playing him to have mistakenly failed to unblock this card from jack-doubleton, when it is East, not West, who will be endplayed.