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.

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.