In today’s deal West opened two hearts at one table, showing a weak hand with hearts and a minor. North, quite reasonably, chose to overcall three diamonds. East jumped to four hearts and when South passed it out, rather than doubling, that ended the auction. Worse, when North ducked his spade ace, West stole his game.

At the other table, on the auction shown, the defense to four spades did not tax declarer. West led the heart ace and switched to a club. East won the ace and returned a club, and declarer could lose a trick to the spade king before drawing trump and claiming the rest.

It is more difficult if the defenders play on hearts instead. Declarer has only one winning move now, which is to play a low spade from the dummy. Best is for East to duck this, and now declarer must play for the bad trump break and abandon trumps.

It is not good enough simply to try to run diamonds; (if he does, East ruffs and declarer overruffs, crosses to dummy with the trump ace and runs the diamonds, on which East discards all his losers. In the three-card ending dummy must play a black card, whereupon East’s hand will be high.)

Instead, declarer must overtake the diamond king with dummy’s ace and play a club, setting up the trick he needs while he is still in control. He can ruff the next heart in hand and revert to diamonds, after which East can score only his trump trick.

Cardinal Morton was Chancellor and tax-gatherer for King Henry VII. His argument was that if the merchant had an ostentatious lifestyle, he could well afford to contribute generously. However, if he lived frugally, then he must have salted his money away, so the same would apply.

North-South were playing oldfashioned strong jump shifts, and when North showed a very strong balanced hand South found a unsophisticated jump to slam. The contract was far from comfortable (there are only nine top tricks, after all) but South found a way home.

West’s passive spade lead was won in dummy. South played a diamond to hand, then neatly impaled West on the prongs of Morton’s Fork by leading the club seven.

Let us see what happens if West takes the king. On a heart return, South needs to take care. He wins the ace, unblock clubs, crosses to dummy’s second heart winner and then takes the club queen. If the jack does not fall, he crosses back to hand in diamonds, tests hearts, and finally will try to run spades if neither hearts nor clubs have behaved. Today, by virtue of the jacks descending in the rounded suits, declarer comes to three spades, four hearts, two diamonds and three clubs without needing spades to behave.

If West withholds the club king at trick two, declarer puts up the queen and can then set up a fourth trick in spades, eventually taking four tricks in each major and two in each minor.

In today’s deal from a team game you arrive in three notrump, against which West leads the spade seven, East playing the jack. How should you play the contract?

Unless the club ace is doubleton (or singleton), you will score only two club tricks. The defenders will hold up the club ace until the third round, to cut you off from the dummy. You should begin by playing the club queen, overtaking with dummy’s king when West plays the five. As you expected, the defenders will hold up their club ace. What next?

If the club ace is now bare, you can succeed simply by playing another round of clubs. This is somewhat against the odds, (because the four and five have appeared on the first round of the suit – which indicates someone has played a singleton and someone has three clubs) but you do have a better play available.

That chance is to take the heart finesse, which is around a 50-50 shot. At trick three you play a heart to the queen and the finesse wins. You can then continue with a second club to dummy’s eight, ducked again by East to kill that suit. However, since you are in dummy again, you can repeat the heart finesse. Hearts do not break 3-3 but you have nine tricks anyway — two spades, three hearts and two tricks in each of the minor suits.

Nicely done – but let’s hope that the North-South pair of the other team didn’t bid six clubs!

In today’s deal South received a spade raise and then a somewhat optimistic jump to game facing his three-heart call, which was initially just a game try. I have no problem with North’s raise to two spades, but I would not accept the game-try here.

North’s third call persuaded South to take a shot at slam when Blackwood revealed that his side was not missing any keycards. Indeed, slam turned out to be quite playable.

West had a natural lead of the diamond jack; cover up the East and West hands to give yourself a realistic problem, and see if you can do better than the player at the table.

What South actually did was to win the diamond king and draw two rounds of trump, then take a heart ruff in dummy. But now he was locked on the board, and when he tried to cash dummy’s diamonds, the 6-2 break in diamonds was fatal, since East ruffed in, leaving declarer with two spade losers.

The key to the deal is that because of the issue with communications on the hand, you must win the opening lead in dummy. Cash the spade queen then the heart ace-king and ruff a heart low. Now you cash the spade jack, and use the diamond king as your re-entry to hand. Then you can draw trump, and use the club ace as an entry to dummy to throw one of your club losers on the good diamond in dummy.

Against your contract of four hearts, West leads the club king and receives a count signal of the three, suggesting an odd number. Now he switches to the diamond five. How do you envisage the play going?

At the table declarer was frightened of a ruff, so rose with the diamond ace, and tried to draw trump. But when the 3-1 break came to light he had to go one down, losing a trick in each suit. The point is that the defenders now had two chances to work out which black-suit winner would be standing up.

South should have worked out that if West was allowed to obtain his ruff he would be able to claim 10 tricks. That would be so unless West started life with two red singletons, which is surely against the odds. So it is best to finesse at trick two hoping either that East will give his partner the ruff or else that he does not find the spade switch.

So now the question is whether East should get the defense right. After winning the diamond king, the shift to a spade is right either if East-West have to try to cash two spades, (in which case declarer could surely always guess the spade suit) or if the actual lie of the cards exists – which is certainly a relatively unlikely position to have to cater for. So I suspect most defenders would get this wrong, one way or another.

Once in a while you encounter a deal where, after the opening lead is made, you can place every relevant card. West leads the club three against three notrump; give it a moment’s thought to plan the defense. Can you work out South’s shape and which high cards he holds?

With the club two on view, West’s lead of the three must be from a four-card suit. So South also holds four clubs. Seeing the club ace, queen, jack and 10 on view marks West with the king, since with a suit not headed by an honor, West would have led his second highest club.

Since South opened one diamond, he has at least four cards there, and if South had fewer than four hearts, he would not have rebid in that suit. Of course if South does hold five hearts, surely that would have been his opening bid. All of this means South has exactly four cards in each of hearts, diamonds and clubs, and therefore at most one spade.

If South has decent reversing values with a singleton spade, and West has the club king, South holds a bare spade honor in a 1-4-4-4 pattern with about 17 points.

Therefore, on taking the club ace, the right switch is to the spade king. When the king scoops the queen, West should appreciate the position and unblock his eight. Then, when on lead with his club king, the spade jack and a spade through dummy’s nine leads to two down.

On today’s deal from the semi-finals of a knock-out tournament both tables reached the same contract, on very similar auctions. Both Wests had an easy lead, and the play developed in very similar fashion at each table, but one declarer came home and one failed.

Put yourself in West’s seat. Having shown hearts and clubs, but having received no response from your partner, you lead the club king against four spades, as East followed with the four. Declarer wins with the ace, and plays a low spade. Plan the defense.

In one room South covered West’s spade two with dummy’s seven. East won cheaply and shifted to a low heart. Declarer ruffed, cashed the spade ace, and ran the diamonds, discarding clubs from hand. East could ruff in whenever he wanted to, but declarer had 10 tricks sooner or later.

In the other room West took the opportunity to count declarer’s tricks. If declarer had five spades West could count his 10 winners, so West assumed he had only a four-card suit. The early play had suggested partner has a singleton club, and if declarer could duck a trump to East, the defense would be over.

To foil South’s plan, West put in the spade king, and now whatever declarer did, nine tricks was the limit. If he ducked, West would cash the clubs, while if declarer won and played a second trump East would win and cash a third trump, leaving South with just nine tricks.

When Englishman Jack Mizel chose to play in the European Open Teams in San Remo with Brian Senior, he knew he was playing with an expert. And when you’re playing with an expert it is always tempting to expect him to justify your optimistic bidding.

At one table Mizel’s teammates had sacrificed in four hearts doubled and had conceded 800, which looked likely to be a small loss. However, the English North/South had a more exciting auction to reach slam, as shown below. And yes, Mizel as North was displaying rather more confidence in partner than the situation warranted.

The slam looks to have an inescapable loser in each black suit, as declarer can only discard three of dummy’s clubs on his diamonds. But look at what happened. West led the heart king, ruffed by declarer, who played a spade to the ace, ruffed dummy’s last heart, then cashed the spade king and then started running his diamonds.

In the four-card ending when declarer played his last diamond West had three unpalatable choices. He could trump, and be endplayed to give a ruff-sluff or open up clubs, or he could discard a heart and be thrown in with the spade jack to broach clubs. Finally, his actual choice was to test declarer by coming down to a singleton club. However, Senior had not come this far to go wrong in the ending. Since he had a complete count of the hand, he cashed the club ace, dropping West’s king and made his slam.

At the Dyspeptics Club, the post mortems are often more fun than watching the bridge. As a spectator remarked, what North’s comments lack in accuracy, they more than make up for in vitriol.

Against three no-trump West led the diamond queen and East scored his diamond ace, and returned the suit. Declarer won, tested hearts, then took the club finesse for his ninth trick. West won his king and cashed out for down one.

When South complained that every card was wrong, North snarled that it was his bad luck that every one of his partners was wrong-headed. That was true up to a point, but he then went on to say that the contract could always be made. He was only partly right.

When South wins the diamond king, he must strip West of his major suit cards, ending in dummy. Next he leads a diamond, and West can cash his diamonds but then has to lead into declarer’s club tenace. Equally, if East returns a club at trick two, declarer plays low and West wins the jack and exits with a diamond. The six major-suit winners reduce everyone to four cards, and so West cannot keep three winning diamonds and the club king.

There is a winning defense, but it is not one to be found at the table. East must play low at trick one, and now the defenders are a step ahead. West has two entries in clubs and that gives him an escape from the endplays.