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.

At the world championships in Bali last September, this board was critical in both the women's semifinal match between Netherlands and USA II and also the match between Polish students and Gordon in the Transnational. Both American teams desperately needed a good result, and got one.

The USA women were allowed to make three no-trump when West led the diamond queen and followed with the king, and East did not overtake.

Meanwhile Gordon declared two spades at one table, and defended four spades after the auction shown here, on West’s heart lead. Apparently, after East had pre-empted to three hearts, North-South had had a disagreement about the meaning of South’s double. When Michael Seamon led his singleton heart, declarer won in hand and crossed to a top club to lead the spade jack. Had East made the normal play of ducking, declarer would have been able to complete the drawing of trumps and come to 10 tricks via the club finesse. But Jacek Pszczola covered the spade jack with his queen; declarer could draw a second trump with the 10, but now could not cross back to hand without running into a heart ruff, after which the defenders could set up the hearts and cash out the diamonds, taking a club ruff to boot.

Declarer’s best chance would have been to crash the spade honors to draw three rounds of trumps, but the bad club break would now have held him to nine tricks.

Cezary Balicki of Poland is well known not only for his declarer skills, but also for his astute table presence. Both of those attributes came to the fore on the very first deal from a match in the qualifying stages of last September's Bermuda Bowl in Bali.

After Balicki’s one-heart response, West had shown some interest in the bidding by asking about the meaning of the bid.

The defense against four hearts started with three rounds of clubs, attempting to weaken declarer’s trump holding. Balicki ruffed this in hand and made the first critical move toward reaching 10 tricks by advancing the heart jack. This was covered by the king and ace. Now it would have been very straightforward to draw a second round of trumps, but Balicki suspected the bad trump break. Instead, he cashed the diamond ace and two top spades, then took a spade ruff in the closed hand. West overruffed with the eight and played a fourth club as his final attempt to weaken declarer’s trumps. Balicki found the riposte when he ruffed with the three in dummy and overruffed with the seven in hand. Then he cashed the king and queen of diamonds, discarding both of dummy’s spades, and made the contract via a trump coup when he led another diamond and overruffed West’s heart at trick 12.

For the record, you must not deliberately mislead the opponents. Equally, you must ignore your partner’s mannerisms. But any inference you draw from your opponent’s demeanor is legitimate, if entirely at your own risk.

In the round-robin match from the world championships in Bali last year, this deal proved too much for most declarers.

While the French women had stopped in the small slam, Asli Acar for Turkey played in seven spades. She ruffed the heart lead in hand and cashed all but one of the trumps. That left dummy with two hearts, a club and three diamonds, and West with three diamonds and three clubs. Acar now played ace and another diamond and, after some thought, went up with the king, took a club pitch on the heart ace, then finessed clubs for down one.

Clearly, declarer could have succeeded by taking the diamond finesse. However, even better is to win the heart ace at trick one, pitching the club jack from hand. Now she plays all the trumps and keeps three diamonds and a heart in dummy, facing the diamond A-4 and club A-Q. East will be known to hold the heart guard, so declarer simply cashes the club ace at trick 10, which, as it happens, drops West’s bare king.

But if East had retained the guarded king, she would be known to have come down to a singleton diamond, so now declarer plays the diamond ace, then takes the diamond finesse. If East has the diamond guard and West the club king, the contract fails — but then it was always going to fail. Meanwhile, this line succeeds whenever East has the club king or West has both minor-suit guards.

At the World Championships last September, USA had two teams — the women's open and seniors categories. The experienced USA1 women's squad coasted to a high qualifying position in the round-robin phase of the Venice Cup. On this deal from the early stages of the event, Kerri Sanborn showed that, like Yogi, she is smarter than the average bear.

Her four-spade contract would have been defeated immediately on a diamond lead. However, just as in the other room, East had intervened with a call of three clubs, so West led the club three. Sanborn won the ace and cashed the ace and king of spades to find the bad news.

In the other room, after the top spades the Swedish declarer continued with a heart to the jack, then two more rounds of hearts. West could see the diamond discard coming on the fourth heart, so had no problem in ruffing and returning a low diamond for one down.

Sanborn, however, found a much stronger line. She went after hearts by leading the ace and king, then a low one. It seemed to West that her partner was about to win the queen, so she failed to ruff. The heart jack won the trick in dummy, a club ruff put Sanborn back in hand, and the heart queen was played for a diamond discard. There were now only two diamonds to be lost, and the vulnerable game was home for a big swing to the U.S. team.