Defending to three hearts, West cashes two top spades then plays a spade to his partner’s ace. East shifts to a trump, won by declarer in dummy, who crosses to hand with a trump, to find the 3-1 break.

Now declarer needs to protect against West having both minor-suit kings. He takes the club finesse, cashes the club ace, pitching a diamond, and ruffs a club, then draws the outstanding trumps by crossing to dummy with a trump.

At this point nine cards have been played and declarer is down to three diamonds and a trump in each hand. Meanwhile both defenders still have their original diamond holding and one club.

Since the black suits have been eliminated, the defenders now have to be very careful when declarer leads a low diamond from dummy. If East plays low (or even if he puts in the eight) declarer follows with his small diamond. West must win the trick and then either concede a ruff and discard or lead away from his diamond king into declarer’s diamond acequeen; either way, South has nine tricks.

The defense fares better if East covers the diamond four with the jack. South plays the queen and West will win the king; now his remaining diamond spots will be good for a trick.

Note that even had trumps been 2-2, the entry position would have been very awkward to strip out the clubs. On the auction, the club finesse may be the right play, even when trumps divide evenly.

And yes, a diamond shift at trick four would have been fatal.

Today’s deal strikes me as complex, because you seem to have a quite a few equivalent lines available here, and no clear direction in which to go. The hardest hands are those where there are either no good lines or too many competing attractions.

Declaring six spades you must take the lead of the spade 10 in hand, rather than in dummy. Next you take the heart ace-king, and must throw a diamond. Now the entry position requires you to play a low diamond next. As it happens you cannot guess correctly. But let us say you put in the 10, losing to East’s jack. That player can do no better than return a second trump.

You win the trump in hand with the spade king, and now ruff a heart to dummy. Then you can return to hand with the diamond ace. A diamond ruff followed by a club ruff allows you to draw the last trump with the spade queen, and claim the balance.

Had the defenders forced declarer by leading clubs at every turn, declarer brings home 12 tricks with the aid of a dummy reversal. He ruffs the opening lead, cashes two hearts, discarding a diamond from dummy, then ducks a diamond as before. He can ruff the next club and draw two rounds of trump, then ruff a heart to dummy to establish the hearts. Next he draws the last trump, while pitching his last diamond from hand, and the South hand is now high.

In today’s deal from a pairs game I know that South’s three diamond opening would not get the approval of purists – it is arguable that the hand is not really good enough vulnerable, and holding two three-card majors is dangerous because a possible major-suit game in a 5-3 fit may well be missed. But as the opponents were vulnerable, South had hopes of talking them out of a game, or perhaps prompting them into an indiscretion. Also, the weak majors with all the values in diamonds argued for taking the risk of missing a higher scoring contract. In response, North’s five diamond bid was well judged (a call of three no-trump would have received the fate it deserved).

West found the attacking lead of the heart three. It seemed right to finesse and the queen held, and now South played the club king, covered by the ace, and ruffed. How would you take it from there?

Curiously, the winning line just involves taking the diamond finesse! At trick three play a diamond to the ace, cash the club queen and ruff a club. Now play a heart to the ace, ruff a club, then another spade to the ace and ruff a club. That is where the diamond finesse comes in: with West unable to overruff, you have scored the first nine tricks. You are left with the diamond K-J and all you need to do now is exit with a major-suit card, and wait for the last two tricks.

Co-operation in defense should be one of the great pleasures of this game. On this deal, however, it was declarer who enjoyed East-West’s efforts when they combined to help him to get rid of three potential losers, all in the space of one trick!

West led the club seven against four hearts (there is a case for leading a top trump) and, after taking his two top clubs, East felt something dramatic was required. Could his partner hold something like K10x or Q9xx in trumps? Then the winning defense would be to lead a third round of clubs, promoting a second trump trick for West (who would either score a trick immediately with his heart intermediate or via a refusal to overruff if South ruffed high).

Accordingly East led another club. Declarer discarded the diamond five from hand, West ruffed with the heart nine, and dummy’s losing spade went away. South was now home and dry. After ruffing a spade on the table and drawing trumps, he had the rest of the tricks.

Of course, East’s play could have been right if the cards had lain as he visualized, but the real mistake was made by West. If he simply discards on the third round of clubs, declarer is still one trick short.

It is something of an optical illusion, but the trump trick is a sure one, whether you ruff in or not; while if you do use up your trump trick, you let declarer discard a loser and have gained nothing in the process.

Today’s deal comes from the San Remo Mixed Teams. Jeff Meckstroth would have many people’s vote for the title of ‘Best Declarer Player in the World’. Would you have played as he did on today’s deal?

Both tables in an international match reached three diamonds here. Where the American team was defending, West led the club king, ducked, and continued with the club queen, won by declarer who now played a low spade. He was hoping to force an entry to dummy with the spade queen in order to be able to take the diamond finesse. However, West went in with the spade king, played a club to East’s jack and East cashed one top heart before playing a fourth round of clubs to force a trick for West’s diamond king.

At the table where Meckstroth was declarer, West led a low heart to East’s king and East returned a spade to the king, for another spade. Notice that Meckstroth could have won in dummy and taken a diamond finesse, but instead he overtook it with the spade queen with the ace, and laid down the diamond ace, dropping West’s king.

Why did he do this? East had passed on the first round of the auction and was already marked with the heart ace and king. Presumably he had a club honor or else West would have preferred a club lead (I imagine declarer thought East was favorite to have started life with a higher honor than the jack). Ergo, West must hold the diamond king.

With four-card trump support, do you always respond to a major suit transfer request at the lowest level, or do you break the transfer? Here North-South here took a simple route to game after a transfer break, and declarer won the spade queen with dummy’s ace, then drew trumps.

The contract appears to hinge on finding the club queen onside, but South found an extra chance when he immediately tried a low diamond towards dummy. As no honor appeared from West, declarer tried the effect of inserting the eight. When the eight forced East’s king, declarer was home. A low spade from East to West’s 10 was followed by the club 10. South won, then led the diamond queen to knock out the defense’s diamond ace. At that point South had established two winners in his hand, on which to discard dummy’s losing clubs.

Declarer’s diamond play looks illogical, as if he were creating an extra loser for himself, but in practice his maneuver was relatively unlikely to cost, since he was going to have two top losers in the diamond suit anyway, whatever he did. Had the diamond eight lost to the nine, South would still have lost only two diamond tricks, and there was always the club finesse in reserve.

Notice that East could not have both high diamonds as well as the club queen – if he did, given that he also held the spade king, he would surely have opened. So leading to the diamond eight was very unlikely to give up on a legitimate play for the contract.

Today’s deal may have a relatively simple theme, but it is one that might elude the non-expert. See what you think.

In today’s auction a light oneheart opening and a Jacoby two no-trump raise (showing four trump and game-forcing values) reveals the club singleton in the South hand. Cue bids show the pointed aces and Roman Key Card Blackwood follows, disclosing no keycards are missing. The five no-trump call is looking for a grand slam, promising all the keycards, but South firmly puts the brakes on.

Against six hearts West leads the diamond nine, best for the defense. Declarer wins the ace, draws two rounds of trumps and then plays the club ace followed by the queen, discarding a diamond. The finesse wins, but in a sense that is immaterial.

Later declarer discards one of his two spades on the club jack-10 and so makes twelve tricks; two spades, six hearts, one diamond and three clubs.

The point of this hand is that although the finesse can be taken either way, there is a difference in the timing and the number of discards for his losing diamonds that declarer can obtain.

As you can see, even if the ruffing club finesse fails and West wins the club king, declarer would still have 12 tricks. Crucially, the losing diamond has already been discarded. However if the direct club finesse is taken, then East might be able to win his king (as here) and cash a diamond winner.

In the McConnell trophy in Montreal the Netherlands women’s team sneaked past their quarter-final opponents, thanks to this deal.

While the Dutch North-South pair had taken 10 tricks in three no-trump, Nicola Smith and Heather Dhondy for England bid to an excellent spot. On any lead but a low club the contract is makeable, but only by setting up the spades at once before drawing two rounds of trumps. It looks to me as if on a spade lead that is a not totally unreasonable line to follow. Instead Dhondy quite logically played the club king and another club. When van der Pas discarded, (ruffing in and playing a spade would have set the hand by force) declarer won and drew two trumps ending in dummy. Now she advanced the spade queen, covered and ruffed and overruffed. Again, the defenders could have done better on this trick than they did.

But now Bep Vriend as West carefully exited with the club jack, ruffed in dummy, and Dhondy trumped a spade back to hand to lead a low heart up. Vriend saw her chance and put in the queen! Had she played low, declarer would have finessed the jack to get the extra entry to dummy to ruff out and enjoy the spades. As it was, declarer was now an entry short to set up the spades, and had to concede a black-suit loser at the end. That meant down one and 12IMPs to the Dutch, a 24IMP turnover on the board in a match England lost by 20IMPs.