In the 2008 World Championship finals, the first board of the last day saw England, the losing team, mount a big charge against Italy, to claw back to a tie in the match.

The Italian South heard his partner double four clubs for takeout, and removed the double to four diamonds, doubled by West. North then bid four hearts, again doubled by West, down 500. In the other room, our featured room, the Italian East opened only three clubs. This allowed the English to play three no-trump on the auction shown.

West led the spade queen, ducked, and continued with a small spade. The partnership’s conventional style of leading was consistent with pretty much any spade holding that included the king and queen, so declarer, Nick Sandqvist, went wrong here by putting in the 10. That lost to the jack, and East switched to his diamond. Declarer ducked, and West won, the defender’s third trick, and cleared the spades. Sandqvist appeared to be in trouble, but when he cashed the heart ace-king and East played the 10 and nine, he realized dummy’s Q-7 of hearts constituted a tenace over West’s J-6.

He cashed the club king and ace, forcing West to part with two diamonds, bringing him down to one spade, two hearts, and two diamonds. When he exited with the spade three, pitching his club loser, West had to win and choose between giving dummy three extra heart winners or declarer three extra diamond tricks.

Deciding whether to win or duck the opening lead is often a delicate one.

Terence Reese in “Play These Hands With Me” has a classic example of deception in this area. Rather than try to improve on the master, I will give a précis of his comments on his play to three no-trump doubled after the lead of the heart jack.

Reese remarks that by ducking the lead he may gain a tempo, perhaps even a trick. The possibility was increased when East follows with the seven. Reese dropped the eight, hoping that West, missing the six, would construe the seven as encouragement. After some sighs and precautionary mutterings (designed to show that he suspects the trap), West duly followed up with a low heart.

I love that parenthetic aside! Now watch what happened after three more rounds of hearts. East felt obliged to keep four spades, so let go in total one diamond, one club and two spades. When Reese ducked a diamond, West won the jack and underled his clubs to East’s ace. Back came a spade and Reese carefully won in dummy to lead the last diamond. If East had flown with the king, he would have ducked, but when he played low, Reese took the ace and led another diamond. Either way he would establish his 13th diamond, and emerge with nine tricks.

Incidentally, at trick six, the defense had one more chance; East had to overtake the diamond jack with his king and unblock clubs.

Great Britain qualified through the European championships for the Bermuda Bowl three times in 15 years, and on all three occasions the event was played on something like home territory.

On the last of those three occasions the event was held in Killarney. Only one member of the team who qualified in 1981 (the earliest of the three) was still part of the team on that occasion. That was Tony Sowter, who for his sins was a long-time editor of a bridge magazine. Sowter was the hero on this hand, which won him an award for the best-played hand of the Cavendish team tournament in which it occurred.

His opponents were Zia Mahmood and Sam Lev, who on this occasion picked the wrong opponents to double. Zia led three rounds of hearts against the contract of four spades redoubled, and Sowter ruffed, giving Lev the long trumps.

Sowter now played the club ace and queen, ruffing in dummy when the king appeared, then simply played the spade ace and a second round of trumps. Lev put in the 10, and Sowter won and cashed one more club, as Lev had to follow.

When Sowter led another club, Lev ruffed, and now had to play a diamond.

Declarer could take the diamond queen and ace, pitching clubs from hand. At trick 12 the lead was in dummy for a trump coup: Sowter could lead a diamond from dummy and take the trump finesse for his contract, without having a trump to lead!

At the Dyspeptics Club, some rubber players appear to regard it as bad bridge etiquette ever to appear to be thinking. As a consequence, when you are declarer, however elevated the level or challenging your prospects might be, the metaphorical car horns start blaring from the defenders if you should weigh up your prospects for more than the most minimal length of time.

Fortunately that was not a problem for South in today’s deal, since he has never been known to cater for any chances except the most obvious in nature. Declaring six hearts here, he won the opening club lead ,drew trump in two rounds, then cashed the spade ace, crossed to the heart queen, and finessed in spades, cavalierly conceding one down when the finesse lost.

While South was claiming bitterly that the only finesses that ever won were his opponents’, North took a look at his partner’s remaining cards and remarked that his complaints were as inaccurate as they were inappropriate — and that the cards had actually lain very well for him. Do you see what North meant?

Best play is to win the club lead, then take the heart ace and lead the heart jack to the queen. Then lead a diamond toward your jack. If East has a doubleton diamond honor or the diamond king-queen, as here, you have 12 tricks. Otherwise you would have to fall back on the spade finesse, but you have in the process significantly improved your chances to make your slam.

The cut and thrust of rubber bridge can be exciting – and when you’re playing for 10 cents a point, a fair sum of money can hinge on the play of a single card.

As an example, I’ll give you a long bidding sequence and an opening-lead problem. Put yourself in West’s shoes by simply looking at his 13 cards, and imagine what you might have done.

No doubt your partner knew what he was going to lead against seven clubs, but you have little clue as to what to choose against seven hearts. In practice, the hapless West chose a club, and as you can see from the full deal, declarer was soon claiming 13 tricks for 2470 points. A spade lead would have led to a penalty of 500 points — quite a significant swing.

The subsequent post-mortem was surprisingly good-natured, with West pointing out that perhaps East should have been happy with beating the grand slam and should not have been so greedy as to double. East retaliated by saying that he was trying to persuade them to run to seven no-trump where the penalty would be much larger. Or not, as the case might be.

Much credit must go to North, however, for realizing what was going on and removing himself to a contract that had a better chance than one where East was going to be on lead with an ace to cash.

The final of the 1999 world junior championships saw Italy take an early lead against the US and hold on comfortably. Even the best US results got lost in the shuffle — as here, when Eric Greco found one of the best plays of the tournament, simply to hold his losses on the deal.

After the opening lead of the heart 10 against four spades, Greco rose with the king and ran the diamond 10. He won the heart return in dummy, and, after a lot of thought, passed the diamond nine.. The point of this play is that he was trying to set up the diamonds without letting East in. That approach would work well if hearts were 5-2, but very dangerous if hearts broke 4-3, since there might be a trump promotion on the 13th heart.

All was well, since Greco had read the cards correctly, and West had no heart to lead when he took the second diamond. West exited with a club, and declarer ruffed, cashed the top spades, then led the fourth diamond to pitch dummy’s heart loser and make his contract.

Alas for the US, four spades doubled was allowed to make in the Closed Room. The first three tricks started the same way, but declarer then came to hand with a top spade to lead the diamond ace. West forgot to unblock his other top diamond on this trick, so East could not get in to cash the hearts. Now the play reverted back to Greco’s line.

When Israel played Canada 15 years ago in the Round Robin of the World Junior teams in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, they played a set of virtually flawless bridge to eliminate Canada from the event. Consider the following board, where a potential Canada gain vanished.

In the other room, when Israel held the North-South cards, they had bid to one no-trump after mentioning all their long suits. This made in some comfort, of course. However, when Canada sat North-South on the auction shown, Darren Wolpert tried two no-trump as North, perhaps because his team needed a swing, Ben Zeidenberg raised to game. The diamond lead to the jack gave Zeidenberg the chance for an excellent play — and he took his best chance by ducking the jack. Back came a diamond, and West cashed his diamond winners — necessary, even though it set up a diamond trick for declarer — and this in turn allowed East to discard an encouraging club. Without that clue, it is not clear that West would have been able to decide between a club and a major suit at trick four. In the latter case, declarer would have collected nine tricks. However, West trusted his partner’s signal and shifted to a club. Now the defense had set up their fifth winner when East got on lead with the heart ace.

Well done, everyone — but one down and a small pickup to Israel instead of a big gain the other way.

The final of the World Junior Teams between the USA and Italy was a generally well-played match, though it ended in a comfortable win for the Italians. The following board turned out to be a victory for neither side, but it highlighted the difference between the "scientific" and the "practical" approach.

Both tables played three no-trump by South on a spade lead — not a great contract but no game is really any better. Tom Carmichael followed the best practical chance for his contract here by taking the spade, knocking out the club ace, and winning the spade return to run the clubs.

This reduced everybody down to seven cards, and would have squeezed a defender who held five spades, the heart king and three diamonds. But it did not work this time, since all West had to do was hold his spades, while East could let a spade go in comfort to retain the red-suit guards.

At the other table, Mario D’Avossa found the remarkable line of cashing both spades at the first two tricks before exiting with a club. This diabolical line works if the defense rectifies the count by cashing all their spades; now when declarer runs the clubs, East is squeezed in the red suits! But Willenken as West could see this coming. He did well to play the heart jack at trick four instead of cashing the spades. This defeated the hand, since East had a spade discard he could afford on the run of the clubs.

Counting is one of the most important exercises at bridge, but sometimes you have to combine the exercise with a fair amount of inference and conjecture. Inferences may be drawn from what the opponents have or have not bid.

The 1999 World Junior Teams were held in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. In the semifinal match between Israel and Italy, a match won comfortably by the latter, the eventual tournament winners, both tables made four spades, but the Italian declarer, Antonio Mallardi, had the tougher task.

He had reached four spades after the Israeli East had the chance to double an artificial club call. On a club lead to the ace, East found the accurate switch to the diamond jack, threatening to set up a winner for the defenders in that suit. Declarer won the diamond in hand and drew two rounds of trump. Now it looks to be a blind guess as to how to play the hearts, but there were inferences from the fact that West had led a low club that he did not have two of the top three honors in that suit. Since East, a passed hand, apparently had six decent clubs to the ace and queen, plus the diamond jack, he had no room for the heart ace or he would have opened the bidding. So Mallardi led a heart to dummy’s king for his 10th trick.

In the other room East had pre-empted in first chair so the heart guess was considerably easier to work out.