Plan the defense in today’s deal as East, when your partner leads the heart two against four spades. Your first task should be to consider the missing high cards. Since you have eight points, and dummy has 14, your partner has at most five or six points.

Could shifting to diamonds ever be necessary to beat the contract? I cannot see how. The next question is whether a low heart at trick two might ever let the contract through. There are two reasons why that seems unlikely. The first is that if partner had three or four small hearts he would might well have led a higher spot card. The second is that your partner can scarcely have the guarded spade queen and a sure diamond trick such as the ace, or declarer really does not have an opening bid at all.

East may well deduce from the auction and dummy’s strength that the best hope for the defense is to try for three hearts and a trump trick. If he believes that, he may well decide that being able to lead the 13th heart may increase his side’s chances of scoring a trump trick. Once he comes to that conclusion, he should lead a low heart at trick two. When the heart three goes to the queen, East can take the next heart with the ace and play the 13th heart. Now whether South ruffs high — when West discards — or low (when he ruffs in with the eight) West’s spade king cannot be shut out.

North qualifies as a true member of the Dyspeptics Club, being one of the more naturally sarcastic and cynical players one would ever have the displeasure to meet at the table. He claims not to need an excuse, saying that until he met South, his regular partner, butter would not have melted in his mouth. But these days he has run out of sympathy for his partner, especially when South gets careless as declarer – yet again.

Today was just such an example. South had got his side to three no-trump, against which West led a fourth-highest spade. (With such good hearts, leading the seven, second highest from a weak suit, would also have made sense.)

South put in dummy’s 10, covered by the jack, and he ducked. He also ducked the spade king but won the third spade, pitching a heart from dummy. Then he played three rounds of clubs, cashed the diamond ace-kingqueen in case something nice happened, and led a heart. At that point West claimed the balance, for down two.

As North seethed, but remained silent, waiting for an opening, South unwisely provided him with one when he commented on how unfavorably the opponents’ cards had lain. What did North respond to this salvo?

All South had needed to do was to pitch a blocking club from dummy on the third spade. Now when clubs break, he has 10 winners, not seven. This line of play even succeeds if the defenders shift to hearts after two rounds of spades.

Today’s deal is an exercise both in bidding and play. The first question is whether to open two clubs or one heart; (fie on anyone who treats it as a balanced two no-trump opener or rebid!).

If you open two clubs and then bid your hearts, your partner will bid diamonds. Now is the moment to bid three no-trump, but your partner looks with favor on his two aces, and commits the hand to slam. Naturally, when offered the choice, you will select hearts, and North has no reason to overrule you, since you might well need a spade ruff in his hand.

When the defense leads the club jack, you must make a plan at once, before playing to the first trick. The spade finesse puts all your eggs in one basket. Can you do better? Yes, if you remember one of the very few percentages I encourage everyone to have at their fingertips. The probability of the outstanding cards in a suit splitting 3-2 is just over two chances in three – much better than a straight finesse.

So win the club king at trick one, draw trump, and run the diamond nine to East. When that player wins and shifts to a spade, you rise with the ace and play the diamond ace and ruff out the diamonds, with the club ace as the entry to dummy.

Note: East might well have done better in theory to play a second club when in with the diamond king. To see why, imagine that the spade and club sevens were switched.

Do you agree with North’s raise to three spades here? I would be unable to resist temptation, but he is undeniably at the very minimum end of the range for this call.

When West leads the club king against four spades, how should you plan to come to 10 tricks? After taking the opening lead in dummy with the ace, you should lead the heart five, planning to establish discards for your slow diamond losers.

At the table East might well win and shift to diamonds, facilitating your task, but let us say he wins the heart ace to shift to his trump, a much more testing defense.

You must rise with the spade ace, to ensure you can take two ruffs in dummy, then cash the diamond ace followed by the heart king and queen, on which you throw dummy’s two remaining diamonds. At this point you can crossruff four minor-suit tricks, leaving yourself with the queen and nine of trump remaining in your hand.

You have already scored nine tricks, and when East follows to three diamonds and three clubs he is marked with an original 1=6=3=3 pattern. That lets you exit from hand with the 13th diamond. West has no choice but to ruff this trick (he has followed suit obediently to every trick till now) and must lead away from his spade king at trick 12, giving you the game-going trick with your spade queen.

The only defense to the game was an extremely unlikely opening diamond lead. If they find that against you, move on to an easier game.

In today’s auction, after the Jacoby two no-trump trump raise South can show a singleton club. After this, an exchange of cuebids lets South use keycard and drive to slam.

South’s first chance for the slam is to find the trump finesse working. But this attempt fails when he wins the club ace in dummy at trick one and loses a trick to the heart king. His chances of success now hinge on locating the diamond queen.

After ruffing the second club, there is no need to play on diamonds early. Instead, South carefully tackles the black suits first. He takes the spade ace at trick four, crosses to the spade king to ruff a spade high, then leads a second trump to dummy to ruff a second club.

After eight tricks he knows that West started with only two spades and only two hearts. It is clear, therefore, that West started with a total of nine cards in clubs and diamonds. West’s opening lead was the club three; and he later led back the two, suggesting a five-card suit. But whether West is being honest or not, East has at least three clubs, so West cannot hold more than six.

If only five of West’s cards are clubs, he surely held four diamonds to begin with. If West had six, he has three diamonds. Either way, West is longer in diamonds than East.

South therefore cashes the diamond ace to take out what he presumes to be East’s singleton diamond. He can then confidently finesse through West for the diamond queen.

Geoff Hampson, a Canadian who has been a full time professional player in the US for 20 years, won the 2010 world teams championship in partnership with Eric Greco. Today’s deal shows Hampson at work in last spring’s Vanderbilt knockouts in New Orleans.

Hampson, South, knew that he rated to be looking at eight plus tricks in his own hand. So he could hardly bid less than four spades, but he bought an uninspiring dummy.

West led the diamond queen, and East played the five, intended as suit preference, to try to prevent his partner from shifting to a heart. (It is logical when partner knows your attitude to use spot-cards as suit preference; here at trick one West knows East has the diamond ace-king.)

West duly shifted to a club, which went to the 10 and ace. South proceeded to play six rounds of spades, and since East was forced to keep two clubs — to prevent his partner being endplayed in clubs — and the diamond ace, he could only retain two hearts.

The simple line in the five-card ending was to enter dummy with the club king and take a heart finesse. But given that West appeared to have opened a weak two-bid with a five-card suit, he was an overwhelming favorite to have the heart king. Hampson instead played East to have both the jack and 10 of hearts. He led out the heart ace followed by the queen, and now whether or not West won the trick, Hampson had his 10th winner.

One of the most elegant and unusual endings I have seen came up on this deal from the semifinal of the Norman Kay Platinum Pairs in Reno at last year’s Spring Nationals. Declarer was Martin Fleisher, playing with Chip Martel.

The play proceeded sensibly after the lead of the heart queen to the ace, a spade to the ace, then the diamond jack, ducked (nice defense). Now Fleisher led the diamond queen to the king and ace, ruffed by East. A heart back now would have been best, but East played a spade to dummy’s king. Fleisher cashed the club king, took the marked trump finesse, ruffed a heart in dummy and took another club finesse. As the club ace was led, declarer had reached a four-card ending.

He planned to draw East’s last trump, then play a diamond from hand, forcing West to win and give declarer the rest. But there was a snag: West could play low on the diamond five, and when dummy won the seven, the spades in dummy would be losers.

South could not cash the heart king first, or it would set up West’s remaining heart.

However, on the club ace, West came under unusual pressure. If he pitched a heart, declarer could now cash the heart king before leading a diamond, to score the one more trick he needed. And if West discarded his low diamond, he couldn’t play low on the diamond five!

So in a sense even though West wasn’t in any way forced to pitch a winning card, he was squeezed out of a loser.

Since the Spring Nationals are taking place this week in Reno, all the deals this week come from last year’s Nationals in New Orleans. This deal from the Educational Fund Pairs helped Pablo Lambardi and Ricardo Angeleri to victory.

Against two no-trump West led the heart six, ducked in dummy by Lambardi. East won the king and returned the suit, taken in dummy. Lambardi ran the spade jack to West’s queen. Back came a diamond to the ace and the diamond jack to the king. Since East as a passed hand had shown nine high-card points, the second spade finesse was sure to lose. Lambardi cashed the club ace and club queen, happy to find the 3-2 split. When he played off the heart queen, West discarded a spade. Now Lambardi played the club 10 to dummy’s king, on which East erred by discarding the diamond nine. In turn this brought West under pressure since he was forced to retain two spades, and thus to discard a diamond – and at that point it didn’t matter which one he threw.

He was thrown in with the diamond, giving him the choice of leading a low spade to let the spade 10 and diamond seven take the last two tricks, or of leading the spade king, to give Lambardi the last two tricks in that suit.

At the critical point in the deal, East could have prevented declarer from making the overtrick by keeping his diamond nine and letting West pitch his diamond 10.

Today’s deal comes from last year’s spring nationals, as do all the hands this week.

It came up in the Vanderbilt knock-out teams, and saw declarer presented with a ticklish declarer-play problem. Yes, in retrospect it might have been more lucrative and less stressful to defend to three spades doubled and collect an easy 500.

However you have put yourself in four hearts, and you receive the lead of the spade jack from Giorgio Duboin. Zia Mahmood overtakes the lead with the spade queen. How would you play from there?

At the table, declarer won the spade lead and went after clubs but eventually lost control, the 4-2 trump break proving to be too much for him when the defenders continued the attack on spades. Declarer found himself locked in dummy and forced to play on diamonds, thus conceding a trick to the small trump and eventually to East’s spade winner.

The best line seems to me to be to duck the spade lead in an attempt to retain control. If East plays a second spade as he rates to do, ruff, then cash dummy’s top hearts, return to hand with the diamond king and play a third trump. Whatever the defenders do, you have the communications in place to return to hand and draw the last trump, then run diamonds.

If East shifts to a club at trick two, go up with the ace and play three rounds of trump. So long as trumps break or East has honordoubleton, you are home.