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.

Put yourself in East's shoes here, and cover up the South and West cards to make the problem a fair one. South shows his clubs, then rebids three no-trump when his partner indicates that he has fewer than five HCP. Against this game West leads the heart 10 and declarer takes the trick with the king. Next he plays the ace, king and another club. East takes his club jack while his partner discards two hearts, up the line. How should the defense go from here?

West’s original lead of the heart 10 was ambiguous, but his decision to discard two cards from the suit suggests, perhaps, that he has led from a four-card suit. With five hearts he would surely have pitched a discouraging card from one of the other two suits – and that in turn might indicate he has minor honors in both the other suits. And what of West’s original pattern?

As it is a safe assumption that West would probably have led from a five-card suit on a blind auction of this sort, his discards perhaps suggest that he began with three four-card suits. On this logic, cashing the spade ace is the indicated play, giving the defenders four tricks in the suit and five winners, before declarer can take his nine tricks.

One other possibility for the defense is that East might learn more by ducking the club 10. Now declarer has to come back to hand and reveal more about his hand.

North's bid of three clubs showed a limit-raise or better in spades facing South's five-card major. You lead the club king, for the three, four, and ace. Declarer plays the spade ace and a second spade, partner contributing the five and six. You are on lead; where to go now?

Partner’s play in trump is suit-preference, asking for a shift to the lower (or lowest) of the options. Which minor to play? Well, you surely cannot beat the hand by playing a diamond if partner has three clubs. There is very unlikely to be any way to collect more than a spade, heart and diamond trick since your partner can hardly have more than six points, can he?

On balance, it is far better is to hope that your partner has a singleton club. Play the club queen, and then give partner a ruff, then hope that your partner can come through with enough in the red-suits to beat the hand. (South might have done better to look for three no-trump here, a far safer contract today.) You should also calculate that if everyone follows to the second club, (unlikely, I know) it looks right to play a third club and kill declarer’s discard while hoping for the trump promotion.

Just for the record: this is the sort of hand where the old-fashioned trump echo to request a ruff might appear to make life simpler. But you can still convey the same message, as well as many others, by Suit Preference in trumps.

It is often overlooked in the heat of battle, that when you have to make a discard you should part with a card that cannot possibly be of any use, rather than one that might conceivably take an active part. This deal is a good example of the theme, although the mistake is one that many players might have made.

Defending against four spades East overtook his partner’s lead of the club jack with his queen. When this was allowed to hold, he attacked hearts by leading out the king ace, and a low one. Declarer ruffed high and West, who was sure his hand could play no further part in the deal, parted with a low diamond.

In view of East’s take-out double and West’s discard, the diamond finesse looked a poor bet, so declarer cashed the club ace and ruffed a club, then played off four rounds of trump, discarding two diamonds from dummy. East had to retain the heart king and so parted with a diamond. Now the diamond ace and king left South with the winning five.

In retrospect, maybe West should have seen that if he had held on to all of his diamonds, he would have made the setting trick with his six at the end.

In summary, when discarding, the weak hand should make life easy for the strong hand. But beware of telling partner information he already knows, and also of helping declarer more than your partner. Additionally, keeping winners rather than losers never goes out of style.

John Solodar (a Bermuda bowl winner in 1981) was the hero on this hand from an early round of the Vanderbilt knock-out teams a few years ago. Plan the play in four spades, a spot you have reached on an unopposed auction. The opening lead is the diamond queen. Before you start the play, remember that a little learning is a dangerous thing, and that this hand is full of what Alfred Hitchcock called McGuffins, distractions to lead you away from the real theme of the deal.

The first thing your mind may turn to is the idea of an endplay in the club and/or the diamond suit. The declarer (a many time world champion) in the other room took the diamond ace and tackled trumps early to find that he had a loser. When declarer led a heart from dummy East rose with an honor and played a diamond through South’s 10. Now South’s fate was sealed, since he had to lose a trick in every suit. However, this is actually an incredibly straightforward hand — if you see the point.

Solodar took the diamond ace, cashed the spade ace, played a club to the ace, then led another club to the king and played a third club. East won the trick and cashed a top heart, then shifted back to diamonds. But John simply won, cashed the spade king and played a winning club to discard his diamond loser. 10 tricks made.

Today's deal exemplifies the idea that reading bridge books will improve your technique so as to benefit your performance at the table. Some elements of technique that are really too hard to work out the first time you meet them. See if you agree!

Defending three no-trump you lead the heart three, to the queen, king and ace. Declarer crosses to dummy with the diamond ace, and finesses a diamond to the jack and your queen. You take the heart jack, which collects the two and nine. Over to you.

Declarer has tried to persuade you that he had only two hearts originally, and that your partner started life with five hearts. However, East’s play of the heart two at his second turn should be giving you standard remaining count, thereby suggesting that at the time he made the play of the two your partner had only three hearts left, and thus that it is declarer who has the heart eight.

It looks necessary to take three tricks quickly to set the hand, and your best bet is to find partner with the spade king. So shift to spades now; but that in itself will not suffice; you must shift to the spade jack to surround dummy’s spade queen. Now, whatever declarer does, he has to go down.

Just to clarify: If your partner had started life with K-8-7-5-2 of hearts left he should play the eight or seven at his second turn, and give you the count.