When this deal came up at the table, it was played at both tables in a local Texas league game in four spades, on the lead of a top heart.

One declarer won the lead to draw trumps then lead out the club ace and a second club, and on winning the next heart he played a third club. When the suit did not behave, he still had to lose a trick in each red suit as well as two clubs, and was quietly one down. Essentially this line required three-three clubs or for one opponent to have a very specific singleton or doubleton holding in clubs.

In the other room declarer followed a much better line when he also won the heart lead, but drew trump ending in hand by leading out the jack, queen then ace of spades. Next he led a club to the nine, then won the heart return to advance the club 10, intending to let it run. When West split his honors, declarer took the ace and set up the club nine as a discard for his slow diamond loser, while he still had a trump entry to dummy as a way to reach that card.

Note that as well as needing to play clubs by leading towards dummy’s holding three times, South also needs to preserve the trump entry to dummy to make sure that he can reach the slow club winner in the North hand.

The East hand might be too good for a strong no-trump, but when you decide to open one, North-South compete aggressively over it to four spades, trying to put you under the maximum pressure at favorable vulnerability. Your double closes the auction; plan the defense on the lead of the club queen.

It may look appealing to overtake partner’s club queen and switch to a diamond, but there can surely be no hurry to do that. Your partner’s take-out double of three spades makes it clear that the hearts are not a serious source of tricks from declarer’s perspective, so you should focus your attention on preventing declarer from utilizing dummy’s other assets, namely the third trump.

The defense to keep all your options open is to overtake the club at trick one, winning the king to make the position plain to your partner. You should then switch to a low trump. If declarer plays a second club, the earlier play should make it plain to you to go up with the king of clubs, and play ace and another trump.

Declarer’s best move, incidentally, is to win your first trump play in dummy and advance the heart jack, which you must cover. He can win the third round of trumps in dummy and exit with a club, but you will win this and shift to the diamond nine. Your partner should duck declarer’s king, and later collect two diamonds tricks, for down 500.

It is important as Sherlock Holmes once remarked, to focus on what did not happen as well on what does take place. Here, when West opened the bidding with one spade, emphasizing his higher-ranking suit both because of its quality and for its pre-emptive value, North and East both passed. South now balanced with two hearts, and when North bid two spades, it was an Unassuming Cuebid, agreeing hearts and showed a maximum pass. South now took a somewhat rosy view of his hand by jumping to game.

West cashed two top spades then led a third to East’s queen, ruffed by South. Next came the diamond three, to the seven, queen and king. Back came a club, won by dummy’s king, but now declarer took the trump finesse and when that lost, down went the game.

South had been on the right track by testing the diamonds early. When East turned up with the king, that, coupled with his possession of the spade queen brought him to five points. If East had also held the heart king, it would have given him eight — more than enough for a response to West’s opening bid. So West was known to hold the trump king and declarer had to hope it was singleton.

Incidentally, East could have made life more difficult for declarer by withholding the diamond king on the first round of the suit, since West’s seven looked suspiciously like the top of a doubleton. In all probability South would have continued with the trump finesse, on the assumption that West held the diamond king. Then East would still have come to the diamond king in the fullness of time.

Today I feature another deal from Tim Bourke and Justin Canfield's masterful new book "The Art of Declarer Play". Against six no-trump West leads the heart five and both opponents follow to the heart ace-king.

Next you play off two top spades, on which West shows out. When you continue with all the hearts, East has to keep two spades and four clubs, so must discard a diamond. Now the link between the East-West hands is severed. You continue with the spade queen, the club king-queen, and then throw East in with a spade to give you a stepping stone to reach your club winners.

If West had turned out to be very short in both majors, run all the heart and spade winners, coming down to four clubs and the diamond king in hand, and watch West’s discards carefully. When you play the club king-queen, you can overtake if East follows suit. But if East discards, and West still has three clubs left, let the club queen hold, and play a diamond to West’s ace to force him to give you the last two tricks in hand.

The only real problem case is where West has precisely one spade and two hearts. In that event, you will have to decide whether West began with eight or nine diamonds, and thus whether clubs are splitting or not. Unless you know West to be of a particularly timid disposition, just play for clubs 3-2. Finding the right play is more important than scoring style points.

Today's deal from the quarter-final of a recent world championships saw South with the same problem of what to do after hearing their partner open one club, then balance with a double of their right hand opponent's call of four hearts.

Had they known how balanced their partner was, they might have preferred to defend and collect plus 300, but we all have 20/20 hindsight, and at the table it looked right to bid four spades.

After West led a heart, East cashed the ace and king. What should East have done next? Quite a few defenders played a third heart to weaken declarer’s trumps. South pitched a diamond from hand, and ruffed in the dummy. Then he played the trump ace and 10, and East won with the king and played a fourth heart. Alas for the defenders, South simply ruffed and drew the last two trumps. Next, by starting clubs with a top honor from dummy, declarer could cater for either opponent holding four clubs, and ensure their game.

When Anne Rosen of the eventually victorious English women’s team was in the same position, she saw that declarer could not be defeated if she had five spades, so she focused her attention on setting the hand if South had just four spades.

Anxious to protect her potential tricks in spades and diamonds, she exited with a low trump at trick three. All declarer could do was win and play ace and another trump. But now Rosen could win and continue hearts, waiting to make the diamond king at the end for down one.

Not all bridge administrators and tournament directors are good players, but there are exceptions. One of the most prominent is Jose Damiani, who rose through the ranks of the French bridge establishment to become president, first of the European Bridge League, and then of the World Bridge Federation, for a combined total of two decades. Jose was a top class player in France, and although he rarely plays seriously nowadays, he was capable of competing at the very top level. Here he is at work on defense.

The opponents were not playing 2/1 so could grind to a halt in two no-trumps; but even that modest level proved too high. At the table Damiani knowing that he possessed all his side’s defensive assets, chose a low spade as his opening salvo. There were two simple ways that this could work; he might find his partner with the spade nine (or even the eight). Or declarer might misread the position and waste an honor from dummy.

So it proved: Declarer chose to fly up with the ace and play a club, ducked, and a second club. Damiani won and went back to the well when he played a second low spade. Declarer now had a legitimate problem, since he was not happy about losing the lead cheaply, and having the defenders shift to hearts. Hoping to drop an honor from East, he rose with the king, and now had to go down when East showed out.

In today's deal a slip was made that resulted in the difference between a vulnerable slam coming home or going down. Read on and see if you can attribute the blame appropriately.

West, who had opened the bidding with one diamond, led the diamond ace followed by the queen against six spades. Put yourself in declarer’s position, and cover up the East and West hands to give yourself the problem he faced.

Assume you win the king and ruff a diamond, East following. Now comes the heart finesse, the heart ace and a heart ruff. All is going swimmingly so far. You play a spade to dummy and West’s diamond discard gives you pause for thought, but, undaunted, you ruff another heart, East discarding a club.

Of course the 4-0 trump break means you can’t draw trumps, but at the table South was confident that West had started life with 0-4-5-4 shape, leaving East to hold 4-3-3-3 pattern. So South simply cashed the club ace, ruffed a club, then was ready to claim, expecting to make the rest on a cross-ruff. Unfortunately, declarer’s count of the hand was not quite right. East overruffed the club – result, misery!

Can you see where declarer went wrong? Although the mistake was hard to spot, South should have played the club ace and taken a club ruff before leading the fourth heart, thus preventing East from making that killing club discard. South could then take the spade ace, find the bad trump break, and crossruff the rest.

Today's deal comes from an inter-state match in Australia, and features a wide-awake play by the defense.

The final contract was three no-trumps, when South made an extremely practical call at his first turn to speak. On lead, Ron Klinger tried the club jack, and dummy’s queen won as East followed with a discouraging eight, playing upside-down signals. Declarer tried a spade to the king and ace, and Klinger exited passively with the spade nine, taken by declarer’s jack. A low heart from hand came next. Klinger rose with the heart king and played a third spade, taken by the queen.

Now came the critical moment, when declarer led dummy’s diamond two, planning to duck the trick to West, and come home with four diamond tricks, and five top side-suit winners. But sitting East, Bruce Neill was aware of the possibilities, and he could see that if declarer had the diamond ace and jack, South would be planning to take the avoidance play by inserting the jack, so that his own queen would be dead.

Accordingly he needed his partner to hold the diamond jack, so he flew up with the diamond queen, insuring that he could regain the lead later, and play a club through. This way declarer could come to no more than eight tricks.

Of course had Klinger started with the doubleton diamond jack he would have dropped the jack under declarer’s ace, to make sure East could subsequently get on play in diamonds.

The time to pause and plan the play of the hand is when the opening lead is made. This was something South omitted to do, on this hand from a club match-pointed pairs duplicate, and he paid the penalty.

After North had transferred to hearts and offered the choice of games, there was a case for South to convert to four hearts, because of the blockage in hearts, but the decision to pass was not unreasonable.

West led the spade 10 and South, hardly pausing to take stock of dummy’s assets, made the knee-jerk reaction of rising with dummy’s queen. On this trick East intelligently played low. He saw that even if West had led away from the ace, North was always likely to come to a spade trick. However, if South had the ace, by withholding the king, East could deny declarer a later entry to dummy.

Declarer continued by cashing his heart ace and king, and when the queen failed to drop, played a diamond to dummy’s king to lead the heart jack. After East had taken the queen, dummy held two winning hearts, but lacked an entry to access them.

See the difference if South plays low from dummy on the initial spade lead. He wins with the ace in hand, cashes his two top hearts then, as before, enters dummy in diamonds to knock out the heart queen. But now declarer can force an entry to dummy in spades to cash the established hearts.