In today’s deal you do well to reach a spade game rather than opting to play no-trump, since on a heart lead there are only eight tricks at no-trump.

Against your contract of four spades you are not upset to see a small club lead — until dummy comes down, and you realize the danger of a ruff. West’s club two goes to East’s ace, and he returns the club queen. Plan the play.

It looks entirely natural to put up play the club king, but you can work out what will happen. West will ruff your club king away, and will not find it difficult to switch to a heart at trick three.After drawing trump you will have to give up a club trick to East, who will cash his heart winner, and you will go one down.

Is there anything you can do to avoid your fate? Yes there is. Try the effect of ducking the club queen at trick two. If East continues with another club, as he surely will, West gets his ruff and shifts to a heart as before.

But the timing is different: you win the heart and draw trump ending in dummy. Then you have time to ruff out the clubs in order to set up a long club for a heart discard. Ducking the club saves you a tempo in establishing the suit. If the defenders do not take their club ruff at trick three but shift to hearts, you will even end up with an overtrick.

In today’s deal as South after an optimistic auction to four hearts you receive the lead of the diamond nine.

It looks right to win in dummy with the king and lead a spade toward your hand. When East plays low without a flicker, it seems logical to put in the jack, losing to the queen. The heart four comes back; you play low from dummy and win cheaply in hand when East plays the three. Now you advance the spade king. When West plays low, you discard a diamond from dummy, and your spade king holds. Things are looking up; but take care…

You must next lead a low spade from hand, and when West covers with the eight, pitch dummy’s losing diamond, rather than ruffing in. If spades split 4-3 you may have surrendered an overtrick, but should lose no more than one further trump trick.

However, when the 5-2 spade break comes to light, it complicates matters. It can do West no good to play a spade, to set the suit up for you. Instead, West reverts to diamonds, and dummy’s jack is covered by the queen. You take the ace, then ruff a diamond as West discards a club. Now you ruff a club to hand, and ruff a spade with the heart ace. Another club ruff to hand sees you ruff your last spade with the heart jack. East can overruff and return his last diamond, but you ruff with the six and draw his last trump at trick 13 with your heart king.

Today’s comes from the rubber bridge table and features the enterprising if slightly optimistic bidding that one generally encounters in that environment.

Perhaps North was wrong to redouble six clubs, since if he had passed South might have contemplated converting to six diamonds, offering a choice between six hearts and six no-trump, both of which would have been successful on the actual lie of the cards.

In the event, declarer mistimed the play in six clubs, but West’s four-card trump holding was not necessarily going to be fatal so long as he held a decent ration of red-suit cards. In this type of situation it is important to envisage the end-position, assuming the 4-0 trump break. One needs to force West to split his trump honors, then strip off all the plain cards and force him to lead into your remaining trump tenace.

Look at the play on a diamond lead. Declarer wins the ace, crosses to the heart queen and plays a club. West must contribute the 10 and dummy wins the king. Now a top heart discarding a diamond, and a heart ruff, is followed by two top spades. A spade ruff is followed by another heart ruff (safe given East’s discard a round ago) and another spade ruff.

After four spades, four hearts, and one trick in each minor, declarer has A-9-8 of clubs and West has Q-J-2. Declarer leads out the trump eight and West can win with the jack but is endplayed at trick 12.

Never be satisfied when you find that your contract hinges on a finesse. It is always worthwhile investigating additional chances.

Here an exchange of cuebids saw South at his final turn show a club control and also a heart control (the suit his partner had bypassed to deny a control there). Well bid, but when West led the heart nine, won by South with the ace, the slam appeared to depend on the diamond queen being onside. However, South saw an extra chance – that of an elimination and throw-in.

With this in mind declarer cashed the trump king then played a club to the ace and ruffed a club. A second trump to the ace saw the good news of the 2-2 break. Then declarer pitched a heart on the club king, and dummy’s last club, ruffed in hand, took care of the last two clubs.

Placing East with six hearts for his overcall, South did the math to count out the rest of his shape. Since East had shown up with six cards in the black suits, he therefore could only hold a singleton diamond. A diamond to dummy’s ace stripped East down to just hearts, and declarer next got off lead with a heart.

If West won, he would be forced either to play a diamond round into declarer’s tenace, or to give a ruff and discard, on which the diamond loser would depart. And if East won, he would have to play hearts and concede the 12th trick.

Both declarers on this deal from a head-to-head match play were awake enough to put the opening leader under maximum pressure. One of them brought home his contract, one of the defenders looked a little deeper and saw through the ruse.

At both tables South opened one club, West overcalled one spade, and both Norths raised clubs. One made a limit raise to three clubs, one cuebid to show a limit raise or better. Both Souths tried the no-trump game, and when West led the spade king to the two and four, South contributed the jack.

Can you see the logic here? If the club finesse is working, the deal is all about overtricks. But if the finesse is wrong, then winning the first trick with the ace may leave the defenders able to cash out spades; while if South ducks at trick one, by playing the seven, then a heart switch may pose a new and equally dangerous threat.

When declarer dropped the jack on the first trick, it looked to West as though South had started with the doubleton spade acejack, and one West was indeed tempted to continue the suit at trick two. But now after winning the second spade, declarer could take the club finesse in complete safety.

The other West thought about his partner’s spot-card and asked himself why, if South held the doubleton ace-jack, East had played the four from a holding of 7-4-3. Coming to the right conclusion, he switched to the heart king to defeat the contract.

Today’s instructive deal comes from the 2010 match between the Houses of Lords and Commons in England took place just 10 weeks after the 2009 event. With an election looming and several MPs retiring it seemed a good idea to stage it early. This year’s event ended in a comfortable victory for the House of Lords.

Consider the deal first of all as a declarer-play problem: how would you play on the lead of the diamond jack lead? I wish I could report on the brilliance of the politicians’ play but they all just played it the way one would expect a regular club player to tackle the hand. The diamond jack was covered by the king and ace, the switch to the spade jack went to the queen and king, and a spade continuation was won by declarer. In due course declarer drew trump and lost another spade and a club for down one.

As is so often the case, declarer’s (admittedly pardonable) error came at trick one. By covering the diamond jack, he allowed the defense to succeed. Suppose instead that South breaks all the rules and plays low from dummy at trick one. If East wins his ace anyway, there are now two spade discards available, so declarer will lose just one trick in each side-suit. When East plays low on the first diamond, West cannot lead spades himself. Say he continues with another diamond. Declarer ruffs, draw trump and plays a club, establishing a winner on which to discard one of dummy’s spades.

It is always irritating (or worse) to go down in a voluntarily bid contract of five of a major. How would you apportion the blame on this outing? South was playing a simple style where his jump to three spades did no more than set up a game force while showing extras. Thereafter everybody cuebid until North applied the brakes, and the auction came to a grinding halt.

When West was dealt a heart sequence to lead, South tempted fate on the sight of dummy by commenting that he had been in worse slams. After winning the lead in hand, he cashed the spade queen and ace to discover the bad break. A third top trump was followed by a losing club finesse, and East thoughtfully returned a diamond to the seven, king and ace. Attempting to obtain a discard for his losing diamond, South played on clubs, but West ruffed the third round and the defenders had a diamond winner to cash for the setting trick.

How should South have dealt with the hand? He should win the lead in hand and take one top club. Then after the three top spades have left the defenders with a master trump, he would have been far better advised to play off the club king and a third club.

Unless West has started with only a singleton club, dummy’s eight is established and South’s losing diamond goes away, while West is ruffing with his sure trump trick. And if West could ruff in prematurely, the club loser would go away.

This was my favorite deal from the Birmingham Nationals, when New York expert Mel Colchamiro cornered me on my way to the elevator and gave me a beautiful hand. Beware; it’s far harder than it looks, even though it is far from complicated.

Without going into too many details as to the auction — we would not want to embarrass any guilty parties — consider the play in six spades. Best defense is obviously to lead two rounds of clubs, but your generous opponents play a top club and shift to diamonds. Obviously they believe you might bid a slam off two aces; it is up to you to punish them for such an insult.

The natural thing to do is to cash the spade ace and the heart king. Then you lead the spade 10 from hand. If West discards, you need the heart queen to fall. If West follows, you must guess immediately whether trumps are splitting or whether hearts behave. That looks pretty good, but it is far from best.

The winning line is to overtake the heart king with the ace at trick three and ruff a heart high. If that suit splits or if the heart queen is bare, you have no problem in drawing trump, ending in dummy. If hearts do not behave, you need 2-2 spades — it’s as simple as that. On this occasion hearts split and spades did not — so if you play spades first, you had better guess very well!