In today’s deal you play four spades, and receive the lead of the heart king to the ace. What are your thoughts?

The spade king is surely with West; and the risk is that you will lose two spades, and two hearts. A simple line, such as playing the spade ace and another spade will lead to West winning his king and persisting with hearts, the fourth round promoting a trump for East. The same danger applies if you play for the intra-finesse (leading low from dummy and covering East’s card, hoping that he began with J-8 or 10-8 doubleton.

One possibility is the specific doubleton J-10 with East. Ace and another trump would work in that instance; but West is more likely to be short in spades than East. You should turn your attention to the idea of negotiating against length in spades with East. That being so, it looks right to duck trick one, hoping East will ruff his partner’s winner on the second round. But West continues with the heart jack, and East pitches a club.

When you win the heart ace you could now play West for a singleton spade king, but better is to play him for precisely the doubleton K-2 or K-8 of spades. Lead the spade nine from hand, with the intention of passing it. If West follows with the eight or two, play low from dummy and let East win the spade 10. You win the club exit and cash the spade ace, then finish drawing trump.

In today’s deal when you make a game-try of three diamonds, North’s call of four clubs is a cuebid in case you have slam interest. Maybe you aren’t worth a drive to slam, but in fact you reach a respectable contract – one that is no worse than the spade break. West leads the diamond jack against the slam. You try the queen, but East covers with the king.

You will have no problem with your contract if trumps break 2-2, so you must start by drawing trump. Lead the spade ace then play to the king, discovering West with three trumps. Plan the play now.

Your only chance is to be able to discard all your diamonds from hand on dummy’s clubs. As you can see, any 3-3 break gives you no chance, and equally, if the man with the long trump has the doubleton club, there will be nothing you can do. So you must try to find a lie of the cards where you can succeed. You need the player with the singleton trump to hold the doubleton queen in clubs.

The best play is therefore to lead a club to your 10, cash the club king, then cross to dummy with a heart. Now you cash the club winners, pitching as many of your losing diamonds as you can.

When West has to follow to four rounds of clubs you can run the whole suit. West can ruff the last one, but that is the defenders’ only trick, since all three of your diamonds have gone away.

Today’s deal features an interesting combination of plays for declarer and the defense.

Everyone knows that it is generally wrong to over-ruff with a useful trump, but just how small can a useful trump be? Consider this hand, from a Junior European Tournament, where the popular contract was four spades by South, which was usually defeated on the heart king lead. However, at most tables, the line of play selected by declarer was an inferior one.

The best play is to win the heart lead with the ace and cash the diamond ace before crossing to dummy with a low spade to the queen. Now comes a low diamond, ruffed with the spade nine. If West overruffs, the rest of the play is very straightforward; so let’s say West declines to overruff. Declarer now continues with the spade king, which West cannot afford to duck (or declarer scores four plain suit winners and six trump tricks).

So West takes his spade ace and continues hearts, forcing dummy to ruff the third round. Declarer now leads a second low diamond and ruffs with his last trump in hand, the four. West must decline to over-ruff with the five, otherwise dummy is now high. When he discards, the hand falls to pieces.

At double-dummy (but not in real life) when declarer leads a diamond from dummy at trick four he must discard from hand! East is left on lead and can do no better than return a club. Declarer wins his ace and leads a spade up, and the defense is helpless.

The final contract of four spades was the same at both tables on this deal from match-play. There were problems in the play, however, and the two declarers tried different approaches, with mixed success.

North got the auction underway with one club, East overcalled one heart, and South contented himself with a quiet one spade. When all North could do was rebid one no-trump, however, South jumped to game in spades and everybody passed. West led the heart jack against four spades and you can see South’s problem: there were plenty of winners, but how could he reach them? One declarer tried the heart queen from dummy at trick one. His idea was that after East had won he might well return a heart. Then the club ace could be discarded and the losing diamonds thrown away once clubs were unblocked. But after East took his king, he unsportingly switched to diamonds. Now there was no escape, and the contract failed.

The second declarer played low from dummy at trick one, with the same plan in mind. East followed with the nine and now one can hardly blame West for leading another heart. South pitched his club ace and was home and dry.

Still, since West knew that East held the heart king, he might have asked himself why did his partner play the nine? Surely to show he held an even number of cards in the suit, which could hardly be four. And maybe a clairvoyant East could even have overtaken with his heart king and switched to diamonds. Maybe not…

Today’s deal features an unusual auction. North’s most likely hand-type for his one club opening was a weak no-trump, and the one heart response was a transfer, showing spades. But the final contract was an entirely normal four spade game, though reached in somewhat unusual fashion.

West cashed his minor-suit winners and exited with a club, ruffed by declarer, ex-Scots star Victor Silverstone. Maybe it would have been correct to have won the club in dummy and taken a first-round spade finesse but at trick five declarer actually cashed the spade ace and received the bad news.

He next played a heart to his jack and advanced the spade nine, which East had to duck. Now Silverstone ruffed another club, went over to the diamond queen, ruffed another club, and crossed back to the heart ace. In the two-card ending, he was in dummy with the spade K-J in his hand poised over East’s Q-7, and could make both the last two tricks.

Do you see how West might have done better? To start with, he should have continued with a diamond at trick four, to remove a dummy entry prematurely rather than helping declarer shorten his trump. And, secondly, when declarer played his low heart towards the dummy, West should have inserted his king — which would have been another opportunity to cut down declarer’s entries to dummy. Equally, had declarer led the heart queen from hand, the winning defense would have been to duck this card, for the same reason.

Today’s deal came up at teams, where the focus is always on making or defeating the contract. It offers some interesting points of technique both at teams and pairs.

At the table, the club queen was led to the ace, against four spades. Declarer should calculate that he must try to hold his combined trump and diamond losers to two. Cashing the top spades will expose you to risk if East has all four trumps. So safest is to win the club and run the spade five if East follows with the three. Then take the top two spades, and next play the diamond king and a diamond to the nine. The two safety plays are necessary if the cards lie as in the diagram.

Incidentally, if East plays the spade eight on the first round of the suit, win the ace then lead a low spade to the seven and 10. You win the club return and lead the spade jack, neutralizing the spade queen.

However, I admit that at pairs I would cash the spade ace at trick two, and go down. One cannot afford to give up on the chances of an overtrick in a normal contract. Once you have two spade losers, you need to play diamonds for no loser. Best is to lead to the jack, rather than play the ace then finesse. This not only guards against singleton queen on the right, it also allows you to cash the king then take a later finesse. This holds your losses to one down if East has any small singleton.

This board came up on the first day of the Baze Senior Knockout Teams at Providence last fall. Neither table got it right – but I thought it a fine example of playing for your best chance. Beware! The early planning will be critical. You play in four spades as South on the lead of the club king. You can see that finding a doubleton heart ace will suffice. Can you do better?

The best line bears the cryptic name of an incomplete elimination. After ducking the first club and winning the second, you draw only two rounds of trumps, and must be careful to use one high trump from each hand. Assuming trumps split, you then ruff out the diamonds and exit with a club.

If West is left on lead in clubs with no trump to play, the best he can do is lead the heart 10. But declarer puts up dummy’s king and has a finesse against East’s jack on the second round of the suit. Equally, if East ruffs his partner’s winner, he can give a ruff and discard or lead hearts. Either way, the defenders can take only one heart trick.

The play is called an incomplete elimination because one trump is left out. Critically, you must use a high trump from each hand to draw trumps, since if you use both high trumps from dummy, West can exit with a fourth club and East can overruff dummy, preventing the ruff and discard.

Note that if the cards do not cooperate, you can always fall back on playing East for the doubleton heart ace.

On this deal from the final of the Baze Senior Knockout Teams at Providence last November, Matt Granovetter made a nice defensive play to earn a swing for his team.

In one room West had led the heart king, ducked by Fred Stewart, who had set up clubs and taken the diamond finesse for nine tricks.

At the other table Jeff Meckstroth took the opening heart lead in dummy. He played a low club from dummy at trick two, his jack losing to Granovetter’s king. At trick three, Granovetter played the spade jack, pinning Meckstroth’s singleton 10 and threatening communications between the East and West hands.

Meckstroth took the spade ace and played another club, winning the queen when Dan Morse played low. Meckstroth exited with a club to dummy’s nine and Morse’s ace. The heart nine came next. Meckstroth played the jack and Granovetter ducked. Granovetter won the next heart with the king, cashed the heart seven and got out with a diamond. Meckstroth won the diamond king with the ace and cashed the queen, but had to give up the setting trick on the final play. North-South took two clubs, two hearts and a diamond for one down.

Double-dummy, Meckstroth could have survived West’s clever play by winning the spade and playing another club from dummy, unblocking the club queen if Morse rose with the ace. If Morse played low, Meckstroth could have won the club queen, and exited with a low heart. Whether West won or ducked, there would be a route to nine tricks on careful play thereafter.