The line between looking foolish and being a genius is a fine one. Today’s deal comes from the Spring Foursomes, where South decided to take what she knew would be a relatively cheap sacrifice. Fortunately for her, North’s values turned out to be extremely useful. West led a top diamond, on which East played the queen. Now what should West do? switch to a club? or try to cash a second top diamond?

Influenced no doubt by East’s double, West decided his partner had a singleton and played a second top diamond. Declarer ruffed, drew trump, then played a heart to dummy’s king, followed by a second heart. When West’s ace came tumbling down, she had a parking place for her club loser. Yes, maybe it would have been right for West to shift to the club queen at trick two — since unless declarer had both the king and jack of clubs, this would probably not let the contract through.

In the other room North did double five diamonds, and led a top heart. Now, although five diamonds by West appears to have three losers, the fact that North was void in spades meant there was plenty of time for declarer to establish a club or heart trick for a spade discard. Even if South had gone down in five spades doubled, she would still have gained a bushel of IMPs. As it was, our featured North-South pair had a double game-swing.

On the lead of the diamond queen against three no-trump, South correctly assumed this would assure his side of three tricks in the suit. A moment's less euphoria and a little more thought would have brought his contact home.

But without giving the matter enough thought, South made the play that most of us would have made when he won West’s lead of the diamond queen with the ace, removing his only sure entry to his hand.

He continued with a low heart from hand, West playing the queen, and dummy’s ace winning. Next, declarer unblocked the spade ace and king and followed with the heart jack from dummy, hoping to create an entry to his hand with the 10 — but West thoughtfully held off. Declarer played another heart, and West won and exited with a diamond. South duly made three diamond tricks, but now there was no way to reach the spade queen, and the defense ended with two clubs, two diamonds and a heart trick.

As West was known to hold all the high cards, South should have won the opening lead with dummy’s diamond king, cashed the two top spades, then led a low heart to the 10. If West ducks this, declarer can now cash the spade queen, then continue playing on hearts. Should West take the heart, he can do no better than exit with one. Now declarer takes the heart winners, pitching a spade from hand, and runs the club jack, forcing West to give declarer a trick and an entry.

At the table South would doubtless have taken the simple but unsuccessful line in four hearts of covering the heart 10 with the jack, then playing on trumps, but West's double alerted him to the danger of bad breaks. He played low from dummy at the first trick and ruffed the lead in hand with the spade four.

When he played the spade seven to the king, he received the bad if not entirely unexpected news. He shifted his attention to clubs now, and had West ducked, declarer would have reverted to drawing all the trumps, (unblocking dummy’s clubs if East lets a club go) and would then have gone back to clubs.

West actually won the club ace and played the heart eight through dummy. Thanks to South’s play to the first trick, he was still in control. He put up the jack from dummy, and when East played the queen, declarer discarded a diamond loser.

He could win the diamond return with the ace, cash a club (preserving the club 10-9 in hand), then run the trumps, discarding dummy’s remaining club honor on one of the trump winners, and conceding trick 13 to the opponents.

It looks like the natural play, but if declarer puts up the heart jack at trick one, then the defense can succeed — since whatever declarer does, West can play hearts through him sufficiently often to force him twice in hearts.

In today's deal what precisely does the raise to five of a major ask for? Most commonly, as here, it asks for the control in a specific suit — one either bid by the opponents or not cue-bid by either player, while all other suits have been cue-bid.

The second meaning is for it to raise a red flag about trump quality, a less common but parallel variation being that you have good trump but nothing to cue-bid. And least common of all, typically in a contested auction, is to use the call to show otherwise unbiddable extras.

In today’s sequence North cannot have a club control (he would have cue-bid five clubs or used Blackwood) so he is demanding that his partner bid slam with a first-round club control. With the same hand and an extra king, South would try six clubs or cue-bid in another suit.

When West leads a club against six hearts, South can see that the matching distributions leave him in danger of losing one trick in each black suit if spades do not break, but he can protect himself against anything but a small singleton in East.

Declarer takes the club lead in hand and draws trumps. Then he carefully cashes just the spade king, noting the fall of the nine. He eliminates the diamonds by ruffing the third round in dummy, and exits with a club. If East wins this, he will be endplayed; if West wins, he must lead a spade and give up his potential spade winner.

South had to back up his exuberance in the auction with some fine play, and he proved himself equal to the task today.

Against the spade slam West had what looked like a relatively normal lead of the heart king, which went to South’s ace. South could see that both minor-suit finesses rated to be wrong, but if he could bring in the diamonds for four tricks, he would have three homes for his potential club losers.

As the cards lie, the natural line of drawing all the trumps at once clearly fails. And if declarer draws a round or two of trump with the king and queen before playing the diamond ace then jack, West wins his king and leads a third diamond to allow East to ruff, killing a critical discard. Then West sits back and waits for his club winner.

At trick two, South found a significant improvement on these lines when he played the diamond jack without releasing the ace. West gave this a good look, and eventually ducked. Declarer now combined his chances to best effect by ducking a club. When West took his jack to play a heart, South ruffed, cashed the spade king and diamond ace, then played the club ace and ruffed a club.

Had the club king not put in an appearance, South would have needed to find the diamond king falling, with trumps 2-2, but as it was, he could simply draw trumps and claim the rest.

It is well known that an expert will always play for a squeeze rather than a finesse. Here is Gunnar Hallberg, putting this theory into action.

After North’s negative double and five-club bid, Hallberg, took a shot at slam, which would have been easy on a heart lead. However, the defenders led a diamond to the 10 and king.

Hallberg won in hand, ruffed a heart, took a trump finesse, and ruffed another heart. Then he drew a second round of trump, cashed the diamond queen, and paused for reflection. If the spade ace was onside, simply leading up to the spade king would produce the 12th trick, and West’s decision to go to the four level might imply possession of the critical card. As against that, West appeared to be 5-5 in the majors, and there was therefore a strong argument to say that he would not have the spade ace, or he might have made a cue-bid to show both majors at his first turn. And he might not have led a singleton to trick one.

Hallberg came to the right conclusion when he took the heart ace, then ran all his trump, coming down to a three-card ending with a spade and the diamond A-9 in dummy, and a small spade, a heart and a diamond in hand.

East had been forced down to the bare spade ace to keep the diamonds guarded, and Gunnar triumphantly threw him in with a spade, to force a diamond lead into his diamond tenace, for the contract.

What makes bridge such a challenging and enjoyable game is that it is so hard to make generalizations about how to play it. No matter what rules I give you, someone will be able to find the exception. Today's deal saw declarer playing by rote, and as a result missing his chance to turn a good contract into one that could not be defeated.

South played four hearts on the lead of the diamond jack. When this card was covered by the queen and king, declarer took his ace, drew trumps, then took a losing club finesse. East was not slow after winning his club king to shift to a low diamond for West to win and shoot a spade through dummy’s vulnerable king. With the ace-queen offside, that was one down and an unhappy declarer.

Had declarer seen the looming danger, he would no doubt have ducked East’s diamond king at the first trick. With West frozen out of the lead, the defenders can get one spade winner at most, and the contract is safe.

Just for the record, imagine that the black-suit honors were switched (so that dummy had the spade jack and club queen, while South possessed the spade king and club ace). Now, after West leads the diamond jack, South can virtually insure the contract by ducking the diamond in dummy, keeping East off lead for the duration of the deal. If he covers the first trick, East might obtain the lead in diamonds and find the spade shift.

When South rebids to show the values for a weak no-trump, he is raised to game. Your opening lead of the heart four goes to the jack, five, and queen. Now declarer plays a club to the king and a club back to his 10 and your jack. Where do you go for honey?

Declarer is playing a tricky game, but that is no reason for you to fall into his trap. Ignore that heart queen; partner’s heart five at the first trick cannot be indicating his attitude. Both defenders know that his failure to beat dummy’s card means he doesn’t like the suit. So he is giving you count, and the five is therefore clearly a singleton or the start of an echo with the doubleton 5-2. Therefore, you cannot safely continue the attack on hearts.

What you need to do is to find partner with the spade ace, so that he can play a heart through for you. To make his life easy, shift to the spade nine, just in case partner is tempted to win the spade ace and continue the attack on spades (which might be the right defense if you had four spades to an honor). So long as East takes his spade ace and reverts to hearts, declarer’s fate will be sealed.

A defender should signal attitude unless dummy wins the trick with the jack or lower. At that point, your primary signal becomes count; your secondary signal is suit preference.