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!

Today’s deal offers a choice of lines in six hearts. After a top diamond lead, it is easy to count to 11 tricks, but where does the possible spade loser go? One possibility is to draw two rounds of trump and then play on spades. This works if spades are 3-3 or the hand with two hearts has two or fewer spades. This line of play comes in at about a two-thirds chance.

A better line is for declarer to win the diamond lead and play back a diamond. West wins and plays a trump, won in hand. Now comes a club to the ace, a diamond ruff high, a club to the king, and a club ruff high. Now you play two rounds of trumps. If they break, ruff a club with your last trump, cross to the spade queen, and draw the last trump, pitching a spade from your hand. You can take the last two tricks with the ace and king of spades.

However, at trick eight when you draw a second round of trumps, if you find them to be 4-1 all is not lost. You can still recover when trumps do not break, but one defender has four trumps and three or more spades. In the five-card ending you can cash your three spade winners and crossruff the last two tricks. This line comes in at close to an 80 percent chance.

As East may sympathetically point out to his partner, the lead of any suit but diamonds would defeat the slam!

In today’s deal from the finals of the US trials Paul Soloway declared three no-trump at one of the critical tables. A diamond was led, and when East won the club ace he returned a diamond, letting through 10 tricks.

In the other room (on the auction shown) David Berkowitz followed an invitational sequence facing a mini no-trump, and Larry Cohen drove to game. He had eight quick tricks on a diamond lead, but the clubs had to produce a ninth. He correctly won the opening lead and attacked clubs at once. Even if the club ace was on his right there was always the hope that the defense would not know what to do next. When Eric Rodwell took the club ace, all he knew was that his partner had a singleton club, so he was able to reconstruct that declarer had the club king-jack and diamond queen.

Since the likelihood was that he had a second top diamond, there was no room for declarer to have the heart ace, so his shifting to the heart jack gave the defense two chances. At the table, Cohen ducked the jack, so it was easy for East to continue hearts and cash out the suit. But had the trick gone to the heart queen and ace, Jeff Meckstroth would have returned a high heart from a remaining holding of three small, and a low heart from a remaining holding of 10xx.

If a high heart had come back, Rodwell would have reverted to diamonds and hoped for better luck there.

In today’s deal, after his partner shows a balanced 12-14 at his second turn, South’s two club rebid is known as “New Minor Forcing”. It is the equivalent of delayed Stayman, showing at least invitational values, and asks opener to introduce an unbid major or to show three-card support for responder. On the sequence shown, North reveals three-card spade support, making it easy for South to select the spade game.

West leads the club king against four spades. Rightly or wrongly, you elect to duck the trick and win the club queen continuation. Meanwhile, East plays high-low, consistent with jack-third of clubs or a doubleton. What should you do next, after cashing the heart ace?

If you take the diamond finesse and it loses, you may well find the defenders cashing a club, after which you will need the spade finesse to succeed. Alternatively, you can rise with the diamond ace, and take two discards on the heart winners. If so, which discards should you make from your hand?

If you discard your club losers, then take the spade finesse, or even play the spade ace and another spade, you might lose out to a diamond ruff. A far safer line is to pitch your diamonds on the top hearts.

After disposing of your diamonds, simply play a third club, and ruff the fourth club with dummy’s spade nine. You give up a trick to the spade king, directly or indirectly, but have the rest.