The Dyspeptics Club is a place where the kibitzers come as much for the post mortem as they do to watch the bridge. Zero Tolerance is not part of the club’s bylaws, and while the members draw the line at physical violence, verbal outrages are considered the norm, and some would say, positively encouraged.

In today’s deal South played four hearts by winning the top spade lead in hand, drawing trump, then playing the club ace, king and a third club. West had supinely failed to unblock his club queen on the second round of the suit, so he was forced to give the lead to dummy and declarer had 10 tricks.

As South waited for applause from his partner, and East gnashed his teeth at his partner’s incompetence, North wryly remarked that if South was half as good as he thought he was, he would still be twice as good as he actually was. Why was he unhappy with his partner?

Declarer must duck the spade queen; he wins the next one with the ace, cashes the club ace and king, throws a club on the spade king, then ruffs the clubs good. Next he draws three rounds of trump ending in dummy, so that he can cash the established club as his 10th trick.

Incidentally, if West has a 3-3-5-2 shape with all the high diamond honors, declarer might still succeed. He strips off all West’s black cards and after drawing trump leads a low diamond to endplay West to lead diamonds round to the king.

Most of the hands provided to the ACBL bulletins congratulate someone on their good play; it takes a very modest player to report their own errors, in the hope of helping others. Mary Oshlag brought this hand in with her tip — I will give it to you at the end of the hand.

Slam is no bargain here. Since Mary had upvalued her strong no-trump into an acceptance of the quantitative four no-trump call, having already shown decent clubs at her second turn) she would have no-one to blame but herself if she failed.

How would you play the slam on a low diamond lead? Mary played low from dummy, and took the queen with her ace. She crossed to dummy with a spade and played a heart towards her hand. East hopped up with the ace and played a trump, and Mary drew two further rounds finishing in hand, but no longer had a winning line.

If she threw one of dummy’s diamonds on the heart king she would eventually lose a spade. Equally, if she discarded dummy’s spade on the heart king, the entry problem would prevent her from taking two diamond finesses after drawing trump.

More contracts are defeated by a trick-one error than from any other mistake. As Mary realized, if she had initially unblocked a diamond intermediate from table, she could have drawn trump, and pitched North’s spade loser on the heart king. Then she could have run the diamond eight and repeated the diamond finesse.

Determining which order to cash your winners is often critical, for a number of reasons. The lie of the cards in one suit may dictate the play in another, or you may need to take advantage of a favorable lie of the cards in order to avoid giving up the lead or taking a dangerous finesse. That concept applies nicely to today’s deal.

When you play three no-trump on the lead of the club six you duck in dummy. East wins the jack and returns the eight, West helpfully following with the four, which tells you the suit started out 5-3. If you surrender the lead, the defenders will cash out for at least down one.

Your best combination of plays to come to nine tricks is to unblock the top spades, then cross to the diamond king and play the spade queen. If the jack does not appear, put all your eggs in one basket by taking the diamond finesse. If the finesse works, you will be home unless the suit breaks 4-1, when you will also need the heart finesse.

But if the jack pops up, as here, you cash the fourth spade, then lead a diamond to the ace. Now you get to combine the chances of finding the diamond queen doubleton or falling back on the heart finesse. Since the diamond queen will fall in two rounds nearly one third of the time, you will make whenever that happens, plus half the rest of the time – a two-thirds chance. The straight diamond finesse is of course a 50-50 chance.

This deal featuring Sally Brock caught my eye. Brock sat North in a team of eight event (two pairs sitting one way, two the other). Her four clubs was a splinter-bid agreeing hearts; her partner’s four diamonds was a mild slamtry (known as ‘Last Train’) rather than promising a diamond control. When her partner signed off in five hearts Brock knew he must have a spade control but he couldn’t have both top honors, so it was easy to bid the small slam. That was the par contract, but none of the other tables managed it.

Brock’s teammates with the North-South cards climbed to the grand slam. East doubled for no obvious reason, and West interpreted it as a Lightner double and made the unfortunate choice of the spade jack as his opening lead. That ended the defense, and led to a score of 2470.

One of Brock’s opponents also bid to the grand slam. Here, though, West led a quiet club king and the grand slam was one down.

Finally, at the fourth table, South passed as dealer and North opened one spade. South now made a splinter bid of four diamonds which encouraged North to use Blackwood (not the best choice with a void). That led to South making a five heart response, which West doubled for the lead. North now bid six spades and East duly led a heart, which West ruffed. Unsurprisingly, declarer now did not guess trumps, so six spades went down one, and Brock’s team got the maximum possible swing, of 24 IMPs.

Sometimes in bridge a perfectly reasonable bidding sequence can lead to the most horrible contract. But if the cards cooperate, miracles sometimes may happen. Today’s deal, from rubber bridge, is a case in point.

When partner had denied a four-card major there didn’t seem any point in bidding the spade suit, so North simply raised to three no-trump. After a heart lead, South may have thought that a concession of one down would be his best chance of avoiding too big a loss here. Remarkably, though, even after the heart lead he received, three no-trump is unbeatable.

South ducked the lead, won the heart continuation and unblocked the club ace. He then cashed the diamond ace. When the king came tumbling down, it didn’t help a great deal, but declarer tried a low spade from dummy, more in hope than expectation. East went in with the 10, but could do nothing other than exit with a low spade. Declarer won and played another spade and East was in again.

That player could cash his spades, so the defenders had four tricks now. But at that point East had to choose between giving dummy the rest with its diamonds, or leading a club and letting declarer take the rest with the help of his solid suit.

As an aside: though it looks normal enough to lead your long suit even when you have a weak hand, an initial spade lead by West would have beaten the contract. Now on accurate defense East-West must come to three spades, a heart and a diamond.

The three famous bridge players named Hackett, Paul and his sons Jason and Justin, have recently augmented to four. Barbara Stawowy, who has won World Championship Gold and Silver medals while playing for the German Women’s Team, is now married to Justin Hackett. Here, she is at work in the 2011 Women’s European Championships, held in Poznan, Poland.

As a note to the auction, North’s three diamond call showed 10-12 points, plus exactly three-card spade support. Hackett went straight to the spade game, and West led a heart. With possible losers in each black suit, declarer’s focus was to avoid a guess in the diamond suit.

She won the heart lead with dummy’s ace then led a low spade to her jack, finessing into the safe hand. West won with the queen and back came another heart, taken with the king in dummy, a diamond departing from South. After drawing the rest of the trump, ending in dummy, Hackett continued by taking her second black suit finesse, West capturing the club jack with the queen. But from that side of the table, no damage could be done, and eventually South could throw another diamond from the South hand on dummy’s fifth club. Just one further trick – a diamond – had to be lost.

Of course at double-dummy declarer can always do better, but only by endangering the contract against an unfavorable lie of the cards.

And just for the record, an argument could certainly be made for running the spade 10 from dummy at trick two.

At the Dyspeptics Club, when South heard East preempt in spades, his natural ebullience persuaded him that his partner would not contribute wasted values in that suit, so that six hearts would have decent play. Right he was, but that same optimism that had taken him to slam led to his misplaying his contract and suffering the consequences.

After the lead of the spade nine, South elected to win and draw trump ending in dummy. Then he played the non-preempter for the diamond queen, by cashing the king and finessing, and claimed he was unlucky when the missing queen turned up in the wrong place.

It often seems that North likes nothing better than to have a reason to criticize his partner, but on this occasion the intricacies of the play so occupied him that his analysis was delivered quite politely. What line of play do you think he suggested?

After drawing trump and ruffing out the spades, you find East with nine cards in the majors. Next play off the club ace and king. When East follows twice, cashing the diamond king and running the 10 is guaranteed to endplay East to give a ruff-sluff if he can win the trick. But if East turns up with a singleton club, he surely has 8=1=3=1 pattern. Cash both top diamonds and play a third, to endplay East in parallel fashion.

And if East turns up with a club void, then lead a diamond to the ace and finesse in diamonds with complete confidence, because West can have no more diamonds.

The surprise result of the 2011 European Open Championships was the capture of the Gold Medal in the Women’s Teams by the Turkish team. They beat a tough French squad in the semi-finals and a very distinguished Netherlands team in the finals.

This hand is from the finals of that event, demonstrating that preempting is a two-edged sword. In both rooms South opened one heart. Bep Vriend for the Netherlands had an uninterrupted passage to four hearts. West cashed the club ace and declarer ruffed the club continuation. With only a slight clue that anything might be amiss, Vriend made the natural play of the heart ace from hand, and that left her with two inevitable trump losers. Needing to set up spades, South tried a spade to the 10, and when this lost to the queen she could not avoid going one down.

In the second room West overcalled South’s one heart opener with three clubs. North bid four hearts, and the lead and continuation duplicated the action from the other table. On ruffing the second club, Dilek Yavas knew enough from the auction to start trump by leading a heart to the king, then continued with the spade jack, which held. A spade to the ace was followed by a third spade. East ruffed and returned the diamond ace, trumped in dummy. Now, using spades in the manner of a second trump suit, Yavas played on that suit, and East could come to just one further trick, the heart queen. Game made.

Iconoclasts will tell you rules are meant to be broken. Up to a point, perhaps. The reasons the rules exist is because they tend to have at least an underlying grain of sense. However, applying the rules without pausing for reflection is as dangerous as ignoring the rules altogether.

Let’s look at today’s deal, from a team game. What should West lead? In one room West settled for the low club lead, and declarer guessed extremely well to let it run, judging that West might well have been unhappy underleading a king here. East took his club king and shifted to spades, and the defenders took the ace and pressed on with that suit. Declarer pitched his spade loser on the clubs, and discarded his diamond loser on the club nine as West ruffed in. With the heart jack falling, declarer could claim the rest.

In the other room West was not put off by his awkward spade holding. South’s bidding suggested little outside a strong heart suit, so any missing spade honors were relatively likely to be in dummy, and spades was the most likely suit for East-West to have winners in, either to cash or to establish.

After the spade ace and another spade, declarer was locked in dummy. He elected to play a third spade, and West won and shifted to clubs, setting up his side’s fourth winner in plenty of time. Declarer finessed the queen, and East took his king and knew to shift to diamonds, to cash out for down one.