Nobody ever pretended that bridge is a simple game, and all too often what makes it especially complicated is the inability to see the wood for the trees. Very few deals boil down to a simple analysis of requiring a specific number of tricks from one suit -there are all too often complicating factors which require you to play off one suit combination against another.

However, today’s deal is one where, if playing teams or rubber bridge, we can focus on a single theme and not worry too much about the other suits. Playing three no-trump on a top club lead from West, we can win in hand and should concentrate our energies on making nine tricks. With six sure winners outside diamonds, and no obvious danger suit, we simply require to take three diamond tricks. If we only need three tricks in the suit we can afford to lose two tricks, so at trick two we simply duck a diamond. East might do best to overtake his partner’s 10 and shift to a spade. If he does so, we duck his play of a low spade, and cover his 10 with the queen. On regaining the lead we can advance the diamond nine, planning to cover an honor from West, or duck again if West discards on this trick. Whatever happens after that, we can ensure our nine tricks against any lie of the cards.

Note that if you take either the first or second round of diamonds, the contract becomes unmakable.

When ducking an ace it is generally a good idea to have planned the play in advance to make the play effective. Consider this deal, from a rubber bridge game in the United Kingdom.

When West leads the diamond king, declarer wins, cashes the club ace and crosses to dummy with a trump to discard a diamond on the club king. Are you still up with the hand? Declarer now leads the spade 10 from dummy; what should you play after winning the ace?

That is the question most players would ask themselves, and a trump seems obvious enough – but that is too late. Declarer can simply ruff his remaining spade loser in dummy, and has the rest.

Maurice Weissberger was East and he found a much better defense when he ducked his spade ace rather than taking it. As you will see from the full deal, below, when Maurice played low on the spade 10, declarer made the natural play of running it to West’s jack. Back came a second trump and declarer won in dummy, ruffed a diamond to hand, and now took a ruffing finesse against the spade ace to go one down.

Declarer could have made the hand had he hopped up with the spade king initially, but his play catered for every lie of the cards – except the actual one.

In today's deal declarer plays four hearts, after having created a game-forcing auction at the second turn. Maybe South should bid three no-trump at his third turn, but the defenders could take four spades and a club against that game.

Still, four hearts is no picnic. Declarer has to choose which minor suit to go after, once the defenders lead three rounds of spades against four hearts. South ruffs, and could draw trumps and play ace and another diamond, planning to finesse. This requires finding queen-third of diamonds onside, or finding the diamond queen favorably placed, and the doubleton club queen with East. The combined chances for this line is less than one in four.

Playing on clubs first offers a much better chance, since it works most of the time that the club queen is favorably located (though the defenders will sometimes be able to defeat you by ducking the club ace, then taking a ruff).

Best is to ruff the spade high at trick three, then to play the heart nine to the 10 and run the club eight. You can now ruff the fourth spade in dummy rather than in hand, to preserve control of the trump suit. And by running the club eight, hopefully losing to the ace, you plan to regain the lead, draw trumps, then cross back to the diamond king and run the club 10. This retains the lead in dummy to repeat the club finesse as many times as necessary.

This deal came up nearly 50 years ago and, at the time, nobody blamed West too much for his defense, but if the hand were played today, the result might well have been different.

Against three no-trump West led the spade seven to the three, 10 and king. The contract seemed to depend on the diamond finesse, but declarer did well to lead the heart 10 to dummy’s jack and ran the diamond jack to West’s king. From West’s point of view, South might have started with king-queen-third of spades, in which case another spade lead could well give declarer his ninth trick. So West shifted to a club, hoping that his partner held an entry, and now declarer had 10 tricks.

Let us advance in time – firstly, North might well have enquired for four or five card majors by bidding three clubs over two no-trumps – this would have led to a contract of four hearts which, although defeated on best defense, might easily scramble home.

Secondly, this was before the days of Smith Peters, so East could not suggest by his play to the first diamond trick whether or not he liked his partner’s opening lead. Thirdly, technique has improved – against three no-trump East will contribute the jack, not the 10, to the first trick. Then West will know that it is safe to lead another low spade for, from his point of view, either his partner holds the queen or declarer still has the queen and 10.

Today's deal focuses one of those suits that seem to feature remarkably often in the bridge problems – but which cause just as many problems in real life.

The auction features the forcing no-trump response by an unpassed hand to a major-suit opening bid. This allows North to raises one of a major to three with a shapely hand (typically four-card support)and invitational values, and to go through one no-trump to suggest about an 11-count with three trumps in a balanced hand.

For the record: playing the forcing no-trump is a good idea if you play two over one forcing. Otherwise it is certainly hard to differentiate between the various invitational hands.

As you can see, South has 10 top winners in four spades – at first, if not at second glance. When West begins with two top hearts against the spade game, declarer ruffs the second round then cashes the ace and king of trumps.

If trumps break, the hand is over, since declarer can draw trumps and then unblock clubs, and still have a trump left to reach his hand. But the 4-1 trump break is a little awkward for declarer, since he has to deal with unblocking dummy’s clubs before he can make 10 tricks. He cannot do this if he draws all the remaining trumps straight away. Instead he must cash two of dummy’s clubs, and only then can he draw the remaining trumps. On the last trump he discards dummy’s remaining club. He makes five trumps and five clubs.

There are enough inferior plays and cutting comments at the Dyspeptics Club to provide splendid entertainment – though a significant portion of the discussions might carry an R-rating.

In three no-trumps one might have expected South to make a play first, and start thinking about what he should have done later. Instead, declarer captured the spade lead in hand, and actually paused to consider what might go wrong. The only danger that he could envisage was a 4-1 diamond break, so he improved on the simple finesse by leading to the diamond ace. Had East held a significant singleton or West the diamond king, this line would have worked, but in fact the shortage of entries to dummy would have left declarer awkwardly placed against anything but a singleton king. And today with East having a small singleton, his line failed. When South complained about his bad luck he received the verbal equivalent of raspberry from his partner. Can you see why?

Leading the nine to the ace might have covered the situation where East had a singleton king, eight or 10, but it is possible to do even better. Best of all would have been to lead the diamond jack from hand at the second trick. If West covers with the king declarer can win the ace and lead to his nine to ensure four diamond tricks. This line works against any singleton in East bar a singleton king, and also against a singleton king or 10 in West.

It was easy enough for North-South to bid to a slam on this deal from the Nationals at Vancouver — particularly if East had doubled a heart cuebid, making South's hand even more valuable. The North hand is difficult to value over an opening bid of one spade. Most experts these days have a way to show a game-forcing hand in support of spades — and that should be enough to excite South enough to drive to the six-level.

However making the slam was a tougher matter; it required some accurate card reading, together with a knowledge of technique. On a heart lead, South does best to win dummy’s ace and finesse the diamond queen at once. If the diamond king is onside, he has 12 tricks at once by ruffing dummy’s heart losers in hand. However, when the diamond finesse loses, declarer seems to be almost out of chances — not so. Put yourself in South’s position and see if you can spot your slim residual chance.

The answer is that you must play East for the club king and four diamonds to the jack. Ruff the likely heart return, (a diamond does not disrupt the timing although it leads to a slightly different ending) and cross to dummy with a trump to ruff another heart. Now comes the key for producing certainty in the ending; cash the club ace, — the Vienna Coup — and run all your trumps, reducing everyone to three cards. Dummy’s three cards include the club queen and a diamond, and on the last trump, East has to reduce to only two diamonds since he cannot discard his club king. Now you can bring in the diamond suit for the last three tricks via the finesse of the 10. You cash the ace, and your last diamond wins trick 13.

When West leads the club queen against six spades how do you plan to make 12 tricks?

Cashing the trump ace-king loses out to 4-1 spades. The ideal way to avoid taking the diamond finesse is by ruffing two clubs in dummy and pitching your diamonds on dummy’s hearts. You need to play the spades in such a way that you can draw all of East’s trump before running the hearts. The best way to do this is to lead the trump 10 at trick two.

If the 10 holds, play a spade to the ace, ruff a club, play a trump to the jack if necessary and cash the trump king. However, in today’s layout East will surely cover the spade 10 with the queen. This is the key moment: you must duck in hand or you won’t be able to draw all of East’s trump before you turn your attention to hearts, and will go down when the diamond king is offside.

After winning the trump queen, East will almost certainly shift to a diamond. You will take this with the ace, ruff a club, cross back to hand with the heart king and ruff a second club. Now you will draw all the trump, discarding dummy’s remaining diamonds on the king and jack of trumps.

Note that a trump lead defeats the slam. Also if it was West who had four trumps headed by the queen, plus the diamond king, he has to duck the spade 10 to defeat the slam.