All this week’s deals come from recent trials for the US National open team, since the trials are currently being held this week in Schaumburg, Illinois.

Against four hearts, Eric Greco, West, started off with ace and a second club, giving the defense the first two tricks, and signaling for the lower suit in the process. Now Geoff Hampson, East, knew that his partner had the diamond ace. It would have been right to play diamonds if he had a potential trump trick himself, but he knew that he did not, so he played the spade jack, correctly won by declarer’s ace.

South then made the mistake of drawing two rounds of trump, using high hearts from hand. Now when he led a diamond towards dummy, Greco covered the 10 with the jack (allowing declarer to win one, but not two diamond tricks). At this point when declarer surrendered a spade, Hampson could return a trump, killing dummy’s ruff. There was no way to come home now — although declarer could have succeeded by taking only one trump and then playing on diamonds, when he can arrange the spade ruff.

In the other room the club ace was led and a second club ruffed, again with West giving a diamond suit-preference signal. On East’s instinctive diamond return, West won the ace to lead a third club, but there was no trump promotion when declarer ruffed with the heart jack. Since two top diamonds could take care of the spade losers, the contract succeeded.

Both players pushed just a little to reach four spades here, against which West led the diamond queen. Before you read on, it is worthwhile to pause for a moment and consider how you would play the game here.

The critical move comes early here. As is often the case when holding a singleton opposite an ace in a suit contract, the correct technique is to ruff a diamond at trick two. Then comes the spade ace-king, revealing that you have a trump loser. Life would be very easy if West began with specifically a 3=4=4=2 shape: a crossruff would succeed and West has to follow suit throughout. But if, as is more likely, West has only two or three hearts, then declarer needs West to have started with at least five diamonds to be able to succeed against best defense.

At trick four South cashes the heart ace-king, then leads a third heart. West cannot profit by ruffing a loser (since declarer would simply discard a club). Equally, West cannot usefully pitch a club, so West lets go of a diamond. Declarer ruffs in dummy, ruffs a diamond to hand, and leads the heart seven. Again, West cannot ruff in with the spade queen, nor can he throw a diamond, or he sets up a winner in dummy, so he must discard a club. A diamond ruff to hand is now declarer’s 10th trick.

This maneuver, where West can neither discard a winner nor prevent a crossruff, is sometimes called an elopement.

There were contrasting fortunes in today’s contract of four spades, from a team game. One declarer saw all the possibilities, and exploited the lie of the cards, one relied on good fortune, and got the result he deserved.

One declarer won the heart lead to play trumps at once. He ruffed the next heart, drew the last trump, and tried to drop the diamond jack-10. When the diamond honors failed to put in an appearance he ruffed the fourth diamond, planning to duck a club to West if he could. Alas for him, East remembered to split his club intermediates, and now whatever declarer did, he had to lose three club tricks, and the contract.

In the other room when West led the heart king against four spades, declarer won the ace and ruffed a heart in his hand. He then led a trump from hand. Had West ducked, declarer would have stripped off the diamonds and endplayed West with the trump ace. Seeing this coming, West flew up with the spade ace and returned a trump.

Declarer now played the top three diamonds pitching one club from dummy. Then he continued with the losing diamond nine and pitched another club from dummy. West was allowed to win the diamond jack, but was now endplayed and had either to give declarer a free finesse, or a ruff and sluff. Either way, South was home in his contract.

One of the simplest but also most attractive techniques of declarer play that we all learn is an elimination play. If you want the opponents to lead a suit rather than have to lead it yourself, then you try to remove all the other palatable options from the defenders before giving them the lead and forcing them to do something they would otherwise be unwilling to do.

If you can take out all the trumps, or all of a side-suit, the play may be foolproof. But sometimes declarer can only execute a partial strip or elimination of the other suits before throwing an opponent in.

For example, playing in six spades here, South wins the heart lead and tests trumps. When they fail to split, he should not take the diamond finesse. Instead he should attempt to set up an endplay to avoid taking the finesse until or unless it is absolutely necessary.

Declarer leads a second high heart, ruffs a heart and cashes the three high clubs before throwing East in with the master trump. Because he only has diamonds left, East must lead away from the diamond king. This is a partial elimination or strip, because declarer lacked the entries to eliminate hearts completely. Had East held a fourth heart, he would have been able to lead the suit and avoid opening up diamonds to declarer’s advantage. Then South would have been forced to fall back on the finesse, but at least he would have given himself every additional chance.

In today’s deal, maybe it was a rush of blood to the head, or the flowers that bloom in the spring generating optimism, but something compelled you to open the South hand with a strong no trump. Maybe the light was bad, or the cards dirty? Your partner used Stayman to enquire for four-card majors, and settled in three no-trump. When West leads the diamond three, it is up to you to try to make bricks out of the limited amount of straw available to you.

The solution is based to a certain extent on whether you think it is conceivable that West has led from a three-card suit on this auction; highly unlikely, I would say (indeed, it is a safe guess that West is very likely to be 3-3-4-3 pattern or to have an ‘unleadable’ four-card suit).

If that is so, then I think your best practical chances for the contract lie in deception. You have to be up to ducking the first trick. But you also have to remember that this in itself may not be enough. You must also take care to follow at the first trick with the six, concealing the two, to encourage East to continue the attack on diamonds, in the belief that West has led from a five-card suit. If you do not, he may well find the club switch at trick two.

When the defenders continue diamonds, you can take four diamond winners and later bring hearts home for four tricks to make your game.

A small slam on the North and South cards looks a good proposition; indeed, on a good day all 13 tricks might well roll in. But the battle today was to find the safest route to 12 tricks.

During the auction, South had shown slam interest and a twosuiter at his second turn, then had used Keycard Blackwood to make sure the spades were robust enough to play slam. After winning the club lead, declarer played the spade ace then queen, to discover there was an inevitable trump loser. Now all South needed to guard against losing a heart as well. The key was to prevent East being able to ruff a heart winner then remove dummy’s last trump. South worked out that so long as East held at least one card in hearts, he was likely to be able to achieve his target.

At trick four South cashed the heart ace, then led a low heart towards his hand. East could see that if he ruffed a loser he would be wasting his trump trick to no effect, so he discarded a club. South won with the king in hand, returned to dummy in diamonds and played another heart. Still unable to ruff profitably, East discarded yet again, and South’s heart queen held.

Now came the heart 10, ruffed with dummy’s last trump. East could overruff, but that was the only trick for the defense. In essence, South had combined his heart loser and trump loser on the same trick.

Today’s deal embodies a very simple principle, but it is worth emphasizing that there are many hands where declarer knows that one of his opponents is the danger hand, and one is the safe hand. In such instances one wants to try to keep the danger hand off lead, and it may even be worthwhile to sacrifice a few percentage points in the play so as to ensure that you achieve your target.

Here West leads a club against three no-trump. East takes dummy’s jack with the queen, then returns the suit, and West clears the clubs. Now declarer has just seven top tricks. He can finesse diamonds either way, and of course since East has short clubs and West long clubs, you would expect East to have the diamond queen. But the percentages are quite close, and if you play East for the diamond queen and you are wrong, you are immediately sunk. A better approach is to play the diamond king and then plan to run the diamond 10. Of course, as the cards lie, this approach is immediately successful. But had the diamond finesse lost, you would have been able to fall back on the heart finesse, giving yourself another 50-50 chance in addition to the first finesse.

This general approach of taking your chances in order, rather than putting all your eggs in one basket, is called an echelon play. My experience is generally that the two chances are better than one.

Today’s deal came from a correspondent who supplied me with his missed chance for immortality, as usual identified a day too late.

West’s bid of three clubs was an improvisation, designed to confuse, and in a sense he was right; his side had a cheap sacrifice in spades, but the question was whether five hearts would make.

My correspondent ducked the opening spade lead, hoping East would contribute the ace; when this failed, he drew trump in two rounds and ruffed out spades for a diamond discard. However the 5-0 club break was too much for him, and he finished up losing three tricks in the minors. It was only on the next day that one of his opponents pointed out that he had missed his chance.

When the chance at trick one fails, declarer should have used trump entries to ruff out the spade ace, and then pitched a club not a diamond on the top spade. Since East was almost guaranteed to have 5-2-1-5 shape, he must therefore have a singleton diamond honor, given West’s failure to lead a top diamond at trick one. So the play is to exit from dummy with a small diamond, felling East’s ace, ruff the spade return, and play a second diamond, catching West in a Morton’s Fork coup. If he takes his diamond king there are two discards for the clubs; if not, the only losers are a club and a diamond.