In today’s auction South’s three no-trump rebid showed a balanced hand and 25-27 points. North’s four clubs was Stayman (similar to three clubs over a two no-trump rebid) and his subsequent raise of four hearts to five invited a slam, suggesting nothing to cuebid, thus good trumps. South should perhaps have passed, with his minimum 25-count, since slam could hardly be better than the spade finesse. But how would you play six hearts when West leads the club 10 to East’s ace and a club is returned?

Declarer saw that he would need the spade finesse to be right. Not only that, if East held four spades to the king, declarer would need to take the spade finesse three times. He cashed the king of trump and continued with the jack of trump. When West followed suit it was safe to overtake with dummy’s ace.

Do you see the point of this play? Declarer was trying to set up the maximum number of entries to dummy in the trump suit. East showed out on the second round of trump and declarer took his first spade finesse, pleased to see West follow with a low card. The four of trumps to dummy’s nine provided a second entry to dummy, and a second spade finesse followed. A trump to dummy’s queen returned the lead to dummy, and now declarer finessed for a third time in spades.

This same overtaking play would have been possible had dummy held the heart eight instead of the nine, so long as East has a singleton heart nine or 10.

Often the application of good declarer technique produces no positive result, because the lie of the cards means that there is no advantage to be gained from superior play. However, that was not the case with today’s deal. Take your place in the South seat and plan the play in your grand slam.

Superficially, it looks as if the contract depends on either the diamond finesse or a 3-3 heart split. If declarer simply plays out his top two hearts from hand then crosses to the heart ace, he can pitch his losing heart on the spade king and take the diamond finesse. That line combines your chances; but can you do better?

Better technique would be to cash all the black-suit winners followed by the heart king and queen before crossing to dummy with the heart ace at trick 10. As before, if the 13th heart is good, then the diamond queen is discarded on the spade ace, otherwise the heart can be discarded and the diamond finesse taken.

However, consider what happens when it is East who holds the long hearts. In the two-card end position, declarer leads a diamond from the dummy, holding the ace and queen in his hand. When East plays low, declarer knows that his last card is a heart; therefore West must hold the diamond king. There is no point in finessing, so declarer rises with the ace — and down comes the king.

Thus the show-up squeeze also lets you make the slam whenever West started with the bare diamond king and short hearts.

When South upgrade his hand out of his strong no-trump range of 14 to 17, North treated his hand as worth a club raise. This combination of actions led to NorthSouth stretching to a thin, though not hopeless game.

When West led a low spade to the first trick, declarer could see that he was very short of entries to dummy to play hearts. So he carefully put in dummy’s spade nine to the first trick. East won his ace as South unblocked the 10, and had one chance to defeat the game — though it would have required great defensive cooperation. He must shift to a diamond to let West win and go back to spades. Instead, though, he made the more normal play of continuing the attack on spades. West ducked the second spade, so declarer won dummy’s queen and led a low heart to the jack and West’s queen (ducking does not help today). That player cashed his spades as South pitched diamonds from both hands. When West exited with a diamond, declarer won in hand and cashed off the four club winners to discard his last diamond.

Now declarer could run the heart nine from dummy and repeat the finesse when East ducked, to score three hearts, four clubs, and one trick in each of the other suits.

Curiously, if declarer does not have the heart seven (switch the heart five and seven, for example) he cannot play the heart suit for three tricks on best defense, because of the entry problems to dummy.

Good sense dictates how this minor suit game should be handled. It also helps to remember as declarer that if only you need to take 11 tricks, you can afford to lose two.

To reach five diamonds, North judged well in the auction. South would no doubt have been expecting more from him in the way of honor points for his initial response, but North could see that as South was almost certainly marked with a singleton or void club by his rebid of three no-trump, the club suit was unlikely to be easy to develop in a no-trump contract.

West led a diamond, since nothing else looked attractive, and South took stock. The most realistic chance for 11 tricks is to set up dummy’s clubs; so with this in mind, declarer cashed the trump king and queen, then led a club to the ace.

The ensuing club ruff passed off peacefully. Next came the heart ace for a spade discard from dummy, followed by a diamond to the ace, extracting the last defensive trump in the process. Declarer then simply gave up a club. All that was now left for the defense was one spade trick, there being a trump left in dummy as access to the set-up clubs.

Declarer had planned the play with care from trick one, appreciating that two tricks could be lost. If declarer had ruffed two clubs in the South hand, the timing goes awry. Trump control is lost, and with that, the established club winners.

Today’s deal comes from an expert player, who was practicing online at www.Bridgebase.com. (This is the best place both to play and practice online that I know.) He reported the deal anonymously, remarking that it was a pity his non-expert partner had not been the declarer here, since it would have given him a chance to demonstrate his technique, or at least to learn a valuable lesson if he failed to do so.

North-South were in danger of getting too high here and South thought he had judged well not to press on to six clubs. Singleton honors are often difficult to evaluate, and North had perhaps been a little over-enthusiastic.

When West led a spade, declarer had to decide how to play for 11 tricks. One line was simply to draw trump from the top and, if there was a loser there, to guess diamonds. However, South spotted that provided hearts were 4-3 he had a better line.

So he won the spade king, played the heart ace and led a heart to hand, cashed the spade ace pitching a heart, and ruffed a spade. Now he played a club to his king and cashed the heart queen. When this stood up, he simply played a club to the jack. As it turned out, East showed out and declarer could draw the last trump and claim. However, if East had won his doubleton trump queen, he would have been endplayed either to play a diamond or concede a ruff and discard.

Sometimes it is better to go quietly when you are outgunned. In this deal North knew his partner was short in diamonds and gambled a second double. His partner took him seriously and jumped to game with his meager two-count, and found himself in a parlous contract. Even though the opponents’ cards lay extremely well, finding the winning line in five clubs was not entirely obvious.

As West holds the doubleton club ace, the heart king, and spade queen, declarer is in with a shout after West’s normal diamond lead. (Yes a spade lead lets the defenders organize a spade ruff).

Declarer ruffs the second diamond and plays a club to the king, the ducks a club on the way back. West wins his bare club ace and shifts to the heart jack. Declarer finesses the queen, cashes the heart ace and ruffs a diamond, then draws the last trump, pitching the small heart from dummy. Now declarer finesses in spades, cashes the spade ace and ruffs a diamond back to hand with his last trump.

After 11 tricks (two spades, two hearts, three trumps and four diamonds) he has reduced to a two-card ending with the heart 10 and a spade in hand and the K-3 of spades in dummy. To protect against the spade menace West must pitch his master heart, hoping his partner can guard the suit, but South triumphantly cashes the heart 10 at trick 12.

North could hardly believe his good fortune when he saw South open the bidding with a strong no-trump. Yet there turned out to be a sting in the tail…

At any other vulnerability North might have been suspicious, but as it was, with a combined minimum of 37 HCP, North saw no point in hanging about and closed the auction with a majestic leap to seven no-trump.

West led the club 10, captured with dummy’s ace. Hardly pausing for breath, South cashed dummy’s diamond ace then played a diamond to the king, being brought up short when West showed out. He could now count on only twelve tricks, but there were still other chances for a thirteenth – a 3-3 heart break or a red-suit squeeze. But when those failed to materialize, he had to settle for one down – and a disgruntled partner.

As the only thing that can go wrong is an inconvenient diamond break, it is surely worth embarking on a voyage of discovery, to see if you can get a better feel for the distribution.

Cash the diamond ace to start with – if either defender shows out, you can safely finesse for the jack. Then cash all three top hearts, followed by the clubs. Finally, take the spade ace then king. Today this will reveal West’s exact distribution as 2-4-1-6, so East is known to have started with jack-fourth of diamonds. The diamond nine can now be safely finessed, the king cashed, and the spade queen is the entry for the diamond queen.

The following deal was composed by Fred Karpin, and contains a somewhat subtle trap. It is based on a real-life deal from the 1930s played by Richard Frey, one of the 10 original ACBL lifemasters.

After South opened a 16-18 no-trump, North simply raised to game. West’s natural lead against that contract was a spade rather than a club. There is much to be said for leading the five not the three (second from four small) but West led the three. Declarer won in hand with the king and advanced a low diamond, hoping to get past West, assuming that if East won the first diamond he would surely continue spades.

But our West was made of sterner stuff and hopped up with the diamond king and shifted to a club. Now you would expect East to win and clear clubs, setting up five winners for the defenders; but when declarer dropped the king under the ace, East rethought the position. ‘Clearly’ declarer had king-queen doubleton in clubs, so a spade continuation looked appropriate.

Of course if East had trusted his partner, he would have inferred that West’s choice of the club two at trick three should have indicated that the right defense was to continue clubs, not to revert to spades. If West had started life with A-10 of spades and needed to put his partner in for the spade play, he would have shifted to the highest club spot he could afford. But declarer gave the defense the chance to err, and East took it.

This column is always eager to receive instructive deals from readers. This deal from Marty Hirschman featured the same contract being reached in both rooms; but the player who attacked with the best lead for the defense did not defeat the contract, while the defender who had the more difficult task did set the game.

Hirschman at the first table did not know whether to lead clubs or diamonds against four spades, and while I admit I might well have led a club to the first trick, he did better than me. He led the spade ace, and on the sight of dummy found the killing shift to a low diamond. In essence he appreciated that the only practical way he would ever set the game now was to find partner with the doubleton diamond king. While this was unlikely, at teams one should not care too much about letting through overtricks in situations of this sort.

In the other room West’s choice of the diamond ace on opening lead was quite reasonable (playing partner for short diamonds is an easy – if unlikely – way to set the game). He continued with the diamond jack, covered by dummy’s queen, and East won to shift to a club. Declarer gratefully cashed the ace and king of clubs to shake dummy’s remaining diamond. Then he played a trump up, and could claim after the trump ace put in an appearance.

Do you think East should have worked out to play a spade at trick three, treating the diamond jack as suit preference? I do.