In today’s deal from the Summer Nationals at Las Vegas last July, Glenn Milgrim was at the helm in a very tough contract. Many pairs played spades, or got far too high, but Milgrim reached the only playable game when he pulled in a notch at his second turn, sensing the misfit, and knowing his partner did not require the earth for his first call. He won the diamond lead to play a heart to the jack and queen. Milgrim won the diamond return and cleared clubs, to put East on lead again.

When East returned her low heart, Milgrim won the ace and cashed his fifth club, on which East discarded a spade. She was then endplayed with a heart to her king. Though she tried to get off play with a high spade, Milgrim ducked, and East had to concede the rest to dummy. Had East pitched her heart king on the fifth club, Milgrim would have ducked the first spade to her, and again taken the last two tricks.

There was a defense, though, when East was on lead at trick eight. After winning the fourth round of clubs, East must play the spade king instead of exiting with a heart. Declarer must win, or East can exit with her top heart.

After winning the spade ace, declarer leads a low heart from dummy. East plays low, forcing declarer to win and cash the fifth club. East now discards the heart king, and suddenly West’s hand is high!

Consider this deal as a single-dummy problem from the Summer Nationals at Las Vegas last July. Take the South cards, and cover up the East and West cards, to put yourself in declarer’s position.

After a straightforward auction, you play three no-trump on a friendly heart lead round to the jack. You elect to run the club jack, which holds, then play the club ace and repeat the club finesse. Instead of cashing the fourth club (which might squeeze your own hand) you pass the diamond jack. Finally, a finesse loses. West wins the diamond queen and shifts to the spade seven. You cover the seven with the nine and East plays the 10. Should you win or duck – and what is your overall plan?

At the table, South quite sensibly assumed from the shift to the high spade that West had weak spades and therefore that East had the spade K-10-8, with or without the jack.

So declarer ducked, expecting to leave the defender with the spade king on lead. Of course he played low from hand on East’s spade continuation, sticking with his original view of the lie of the cards. Allen Hawkins, sitting West, playing with Bernie Yomtov, won his spade king to clear the spade suit, and suddenly declarer had eight tricks and no more. Declarer could cross to the heart king to cash his club, but West could pitch a heart, then get in with the diamond ace to cash his long spade.

When this deal arose in one of the pairs tournaments at the summer nationals at Las Vegas last summer, the reporter did not specify the names of the guilty party.

As he said, interesting and amusing things happen when you take on Mr. Magoo. To start with, has he made the call he intended to? Has he sorted his hand properly? One never knows. This was a typical problem he posed his opponents.

Sitting South, you seem to have a very good hand in fourth seat considering the bidding, but you trust partner, not the opponents, and bid what you think you can make. On a low diamond lead, you have your first challenge. Surely West would not underlead the diamond ace-king? You play low and East plays the king. Back comes a diamond to the ace and a third diamond establishes West’s jack.

Now you know the full story – you think. You cash the spade king and spade queen, then play a club to your ace and another to dummy’s king. If the clubs are not good, you play the heart king. West does best to duck, so you lead a heart to the queen, and if West ducks again, throw him in with a diamond to his jack to give you a heart trick at the end.

Nine tricks duly materialize, and Mr. Magoo apologizes shamefacedly to his partner for opening his nine-point hand. “Sorry,” he says, “I thought I had three aces, not two!”

All the deals this week come from the summer nationals last year, held in Las Vegas in July 2014.

When Kit Woolsey gives you a deal he thinks might be interesting, you can assume it will offer more than most people’s challenges. So put yourself in four spades as South and see if you can match his logic.

At trick one, West leads the diamond jack to East’s king. Back comes a low trump and you have to plan the rest of the play.

It might seem like a blind guess as to whether to rise with the ace or finesse the queen, but look a little more closely at the position. When you are in a bad contract, look for a set of conditions that would allow you to make. When, as here, you are in a good contract, go to the other extreme and look at what lie of the cards might defeat you – then protect against that lie.

At trick two Woolsey put up the spade ace, calculating that the contract was in danger only if East had the club king. If that were so, he could infer that East would have short spades and a full opening bid if his hand included the spade king. So if he held that hand, he would have been favorite to have acted over North’s one heart response to show spades – either by doubling, or cuebidding one spade, perhaps.

Woolsey concluded that it must be right to rise with the ace – and so it proved.

Defending against four spades on this deal, East should have had dummy’s hearts completely bottled up. However, he allowed declarer to come to a vital trick in the suit.

West led the heart four, and East won with the king, under which South dropped the queen. It was clear to East that his partner’s lead was a singleton so, to demonstrate his contempt for South’s feeble false-card, he cashed the heart ace and continued with a third heart. Declarer ruffed high, drew trump in two rounds ending in dummy, and cashed the heart jack, throwing a club. Next came the singleton diamond from the table and East’s diamond ace was the last trick for the defense.

East should have used his knowledge of the heart position to better advantage. He does have to decide at trick one whether to play his partner for precisely the doubleton spade queen or the singleton king (in which case it would be right to play for trump promotions by defending as he did). But if he plays his partner for a slow club trick, then he should lead the heart nine at trick two, not the ace. West ruffs, as expected, and taking the high heart spot as a suit preference signal, puts East in again with the diamond ace.

Another low heart lead by East now forces declarer to ruff high. As East’s heart ace is still intact, South gets no discards on the hearts and has to lose a club, two hearts and a diamond.

A solid trump fit can sometimes be overvalued at the game-level (though not at the slam-level). In a typical delicate game contract you often hope for favorable breaks – and too much strength in trumps reduces those options.

In today’s deal South’s four-card support for partner would often be enough to break the transfer. However, South’s hand would have had much more potential had some of those values been outside trumps. Hence South’s decision to bid an obedient two hearts.

When East aggressively balanced with two spades South upped the ante, and now over West’s three spade bid North got involved again. The appropriate odds for a vulnerable game assume that the alternative is plus 140. But here it was quite possible that the alternative might have been minus 140 (with East/ West making three spades).

Although there were four top losers in four hearts on a spade lead, declarer found a line to give the defenders a problem they didn’t solve. First, he won the spade lead in dummy, leaving the defenders in some doubt as to the location of the spade king. Then he cashed just the heart ace before playing a club to dummy’s nine and East’s ace.

East accurately switched to a low diamond now, but West did not focus on the earlier club play to see the urgency of winning with the ace and returning the jack. He took his diamond jack then ace, and reverted to spades, so declarer could dispose of two of dummy’s diamonds on his clubs, and make his game.

At the Dyspeptics Club the play and defense frequently take second place to the repartee and insults that take place in the post mortem. The club has been considering selling ringside seats, but they fear that the language might be unsuitable for people of nervous disposition.

Today’s deal was the exception to the rule that the players generally performed at something below the highest level. To start with, North used a piece of delicate modern science to get to game. His jump to three diamonds, by a hand that couldn’t act over one club, showed heart fit and a diamond suit. This makes perfect sense: you can’t have a single-suited diamond hand and not be able to act with it at your first turn, can you?

Against South’s four hearts, West began by leading the club king and queen. It would have been easy for East to sit back and wait for his partner to cash out, perhaps discarding the spade jack to clarify his holding in that suit. But the diamonds were clearly threatening to provide discards for declarer’s spades. So East ruffed the second club and shifted to spades, letting West cash out for down one.

At the end of the deal East leaned forward, perhaps expecting a small acknowledgment from his partner. Instead, West smiled consolingly and told East not to worry about ruffing his winner, even if it had cost an undertrick. At that point the trouble started…

Does the theme of today’s deal seem slightly familiar? If so, it may be because it is one of the bridge-writer’s favorites. Just to let you into a not particularly well-kept secret, not every deal that appears in this column actually happened. Spot cards are manipulated, errors concealed, and sometimes the names are concealed, to protect innocent, guilty, and whistle-blower alike.

That said, plan the play in four spades as South after the lead of the heart king to your ace. If your first reaction was to draw trump to avoid accidents, you will escape the sword of Damocles two thirds of the time, and move on without realizing that you had run an unnecessary risk.

But imagine that trumps split four-one, which they will do often enough that you need to take precautions against it. If you draw all the trump and give up a club, you are forced for the first time. You ruff the heart and play a club, and the next heart leaves you without any trumps when you give up the third club.

However, at trick one you should calculate you have nine tricks and need to set up a club. Best is to play a club at once. Ruff the heart return and play another club. Then ruff the third heart and play yet another club. West wins the trick and has no answer now, because the next heart can be ruffed high in dummy. So you retain control and make the contract.

Before you touch a card here in the contract of three no-trump, on a top spade lead, focus just on the North and South cards, and ask yourself just how good your chances of making the contract are.

A simple answer would be that if you quite reasonably assume the opponents’ spades to be 6-3, they are threatening to set up then cash out that suit. To come to nine tricks you could play on diamonds — a 50 percent chance — or you could play on clubs, which seems to work when that suit breaks, or when the diamond finesse succeeds, should clubs not break.

Many players would win the spade lead and play to the club queen, then advance the club jack from dummy. West wins the trick and clears spades, leaving you the diamond finesse as your last chance. Bzzt! Bad luck, but we have some lovely parting gifts for you.

You can improve dramatically on that last line, after the club queen holds. Come to hand with a heart and play another club up towards the jack. It will do West no good to fly up with the ace and lose his second club stopper, so he ducks, and now you have discovered the bad club break without losing the lead. There is no need for heroics, simply play the diamond ace and another diamond, losing a trick to the king, but scoring three diamond tricks and two winners in each of the other suits.