Today's deal details two points of technique, which the inexperienced player should try to master.

The first one involves when to win and when to duck at a no-trump contract. There is no hard and fast rule but it is generally true that when you hold a single stopper in the suit the opponents lead, you tend to hold up if there is no shift you fear. Meanwhile, if you hold two guards, the calculation is far more complex, and tends to hinge on how many high cards you know you will need to knock out.

In today’s deal South ducked the opening lead of the diamond queen, despite the risk coming from a spade shift, because he could see that he might have a considerable amount of work to do in diamonds. Next came a diamond to his ace, and now South played the club jack to East’s queen. That player shifted to a spade at trick four, and it was tempting to let this run to dummy’s queen. However South saw that he would be in danger if West held both the spade king and diamond ace, since he would win and clear diamonds while he still retained his club entry, and declarer has only eight winners.

So South rose with the spade ace then went back to clubs. He could now ensure that he would make a spade trick, four hearts, two diamonds and two clubs, while the defenders were limited to one diamond and three black-suit winners.

Today's deal comes from the excellent new book by Tim Bourke and Justin Canfield, “The Art of Declarer Play”. Tim provides the deals, Justin the thought process an expert player must go through on a complex deal.

When West leads the diamond five against your slam, how do you plan to make 12 tricks? Since West clearly has the spade ace, you must ruff clubs and utilize your knowledge of West’s length in the majors. The first question is if you can make the slam when West has a singleton club by drawing trump, then taking the club ruffs. Try it, and you will find that you have to use the heart king as an entry to dummy, or that if you lead a low spade from hand, a heart shift rates to break up the pressure for a squeeze.

You should conclude that making 12 tricks is impossible when West began with two trumps. You must hope that West has only one trump, and take the opening lead to cash the club ace-king at once. If they live, you ruff a club, then cross back to the diamond 10 and ruff dummy’s last club. Now you go to dummy with your last diamond to play the fourth and fifth round of trumps, pitching a spade and heart from hand.

In the four-card ending if West comes down to a doubleton heart, your hearts run. If instead he blanks the spade ace, you will give up a spade, ducking in hand, to establish the spade king.

While it is true that you will only make one trick with the trump ace, precisely when you take it makes all the difference. The timing was certainly critical on this deal.

South was hardly full value for his opening bid of one spade and he was unable to curb North’s enthusiasm until a small slam was reached. An opening heart lead would have defeated the spade slam, but West chose the diamond queen. Declarer won and started on trumps. West held off the first round but won the second on which East signaled heavily with the heart jack.

The heart switch was too late – declarer won on the table and played off his remaining trumps and his other top diamond. East, unable to withstand the pressure, had to concede the twelfth trick.

Can you see a successful defense for West even after his diamond lead? He must save his trump ace until the third round, when dummy’s last spade is played, and then return, not a heart, but a second diamond. The effect of this is that declarer cannot conveniently come back to hand after cashing the heart ace. This maneuver is known as the Vienna Coup. With the heart ace still in place on the table, dummy has no convenient discard on declarer’s last trump and thus East, discarding after dummy, is in no trouble with his discards.

On today's deal from the Dyspeptics Club the results that followed South's long trance provided entertainment for the spectators, but heartache for at least one player at the table.

Against six spades, West led the heart jack, won by South’s ace, and the spade ace and king revealed that East had an inevitable trump trick.

After cashing the heart king and club ace, two lines presented themselves as reasonable alternatives. The first was to cash the diamond ace, then exit with a trump. This line would win if West had a singleton diamond queen, or East had a void or any singleton diamond, together with any time that East had the diamond queen.

The second line was to cash both top diamonds before exiting with a trump. This would work if West had a diamond void, or a singleton or doubleton diamond queen. It would also win if East had two or fewer diamonds. The second line is better than for the first, because East’s spade length makes it more likely he has short than long diamonds, and it South duly followed that line. When East took his spade queen he had no diamond to play, and so had to give declarer an entry to dummy for the discards he needed.

When North congratulated his partner with a mixture of encouragement and surprise, South explained his rationale as being based on the adage ‘Eight ever, nine never’, which required you to play for the drop when missing five cards. No one has yet found out if he was being serious.

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.