The summer nationals are currently being held in Las Vegas. Therefore all the deals this week come from last year's national championships held in Atlanta.

Imagine that you have reached three no-trump on this deal. (You may not like that first double, but that is what happened at the table, and the options are not especially attractive.) The defenders lead hearts, of course, and can set up their suit while still apparently retaining plenty of entries with which to get in and cash out their suit. Does declarer have any chance now?

As Edgar Kaplan said, where there are eight tricks there are always nine. Declarer can reasonably expect East to be 5-5 in the majors and thus to be the hand brought under pressure.

Declarer simply wins the heart ace and runs five clubs. On the last club, East (who can keep only seven cards) is caught in a triple-squeeze. He wants to hold onto the spade K-Q, his four remaining hearts and the guarded diamond king — but the laws do not permit that.

If East pitches a spade or a diamond, you get your extra tricks from that suit at once. If he lets go of a heart, you can duck a spade and set up that suit, and the opponents will have only three heart tricks to cash before you get in with the diamond ace and take the two further spade winners that you need for your contract.

Sometimes second hand high by the defense will start a completely wrong train of thought for declarer. On this deal, my regular teammate, Hugh Ross, was caught out by the ingenious defense of Vino Bisht of the Netherlands.

The defense to three no-trump started with a diamond to the ace and a low club from dummy, on which Bisht imaginatively rose with the queen! He could see that unless his partner had both the club king and jack, three no-trump was virtually bound to make. He shifted to the diamond 10, and Ross decided to duck this trick. That play would have been correct if he kept West off play and neutralized the diamonds, and the play thus far had persuaded Ross that East had either the club king or jack. By contrast, covering the diamond 10 might have let West duck the trick; now when East got on lead in clubs, another diamond through would spell curtains for the contract.

However Bisht could now clear the diamonds, and Ross took the fourth round of the suit, then played a club to the ace and another club. He assumed that East, the nondanger hand, would take this trick; instead van Oppen won and cashed the fifth diamond for one down.

In the other room, Hans Kreyns won the diamond ace and led a club to the eight and jack. He ducked the diamond return, won the fourth round of the suit, then ducked a club to East and had nine tricks.

In today's deal both tables played three no-trump, but at one table it was North who was declarer; in the other room it was South.

Where North was declarer, the lead was the spade jack, and declarer won in hand with the queen, and still had two spade guards left, while needing to knock out the ace and king of diamonds. So he had no trouble coming to 10 tricks.

In the other room West led the spade five in the auction shown. Declarer captured East’s king with his ace, and West won the first diamond and pressed on with spades. Now the defenders could set up their spades while retaining the diamond ace as an entry to the suit, beating the game by two tricks. How many mistakes were made here?

The last mistake was declarer’s. If he ducks the spade king, the defenders cannot both set up and cash out the spades, since when West wins the diamond king he will have no spades left. And there is no shift that will help the defenders at trick two.

However, East was also at fault. The opening lead made it clear that declarer held two spade stoppers. With just one side-entry, East should compel South to use one of those stoppers at once, by declining to cover dummy’s singleton spade queen.

Now when West gets in with the diamond king, he can establish the spade suit before East’s diamond ace is removed.

The Italians currently have the world's best team, but bridge is a game of mistakes and they make theirs, just like everyone else, even if not quite so many as other people. See if you can improve on the Italian cardplay on this deal.

Against South’s four hearts, reached after an uninterrupted auction, West led the club four, playing third and lowest leads, to the king and ace, and East switched to the spade queen. The Italian declarer won in hand, ruffed a club, played a heart to his ace, and ruffed his last club with the heart jack. Now he played a diamond to the king and ace, followed by a spade to his ace and another spade, won by East’s jack. East got off lead with the diamond jack, and when declarer played the heart king, he found the bad break, which meant he had to lose two more trump tricks one way or another.

The winning line is to play a spade in the four-card ending. East ruffs this and either plays a trump — allowing the finesse — or a club, which declarer can ruff low in hand and overruff in the dummy, to lead a diamond for the trump coup.

There were good reasons to suspect trumps were going to break 4-1. The 5-2 diamond break looked highly probable, and East was known to have precisely three spades. Moreover, West’s lead of the club four (once East had released the club three) meant he strongly rated to have led from a five-card suit.

This hand was reported as a missed opportunity rather than as a play actually found, suggesting it was too difficult to find at the table, though these things are often easier on paper than in real life. When this hand occurred in the Blue Ribbon pairs a few years ago, East's weak two-spade bid provoked his opponents into overbidding to game.

In the typical auction shown here, South’s three-club bid showed values (without them he would have bid two no-trump), and NorthSouth then drove to three no-trump. South ducked the lead of the spade 10 and won the next spade. His natural play was to finesse the club queen, lay down the ace, and play a third round of clubs, achieving his aim of setting up the clubs without letting East get the lead.

However, at the end of trick two, West could perhaps have foreseen the location of all the high cards. What would have happened if West had contributed the club 10 on the first round of the suit?

Declarer knows that he is safe if this is a true card from the K-J-10; but what if West has K-10 doubleton — in that case, playing clubs from the top would let East win the third round of clubs and cash his spades. Therefore, South may well decide to duck the second club, to keep East off lead. Of course, if South makes this play, East wins the club jack, and can cash out for one down.

It is often hard to know when to make a penalty double. When East decided to pounce in today's deal, he found that the opponents' contract was cold, but he got lucky when declarer missed the point.

Perhaps you would like to cover up the East and West cards and plan the play in four hearts doubled before reading on.

Declarer took the lead of the club king and at trick two played a heart to his ace. He then played the spade queen and a spade to his king before leading a diamond to the 10 and jack. East cashed his two trump winners before getting off play with a club, and declarer had to give the defenders another trick at the end.

Declarer had missed the underlying theme, since he should have tried to set up the dummy by ruffing two diamonds in hand (one could be discarded on a spade). It didn’t matter if he lost two trump tricks, so long as he lost only one diamond trick.

At trick, two declarer should have played a diamond. Suppose East wins and returns a spade. Declarer wins in dummy and ruffs a diamond. Now a trump to the ace discloses the 3-0 break, but declarer is under no pressure. He ruffs a diamond to hand and a club to dummy, then ruffs the fourth diamond and simply concedes two trumps at the end.

Once West is known to have three or more diamonds, the club ruff in dummy is safe.

In today's deal, declarer neglected to focus on the possible problem he might have with communications, and so gave up his best chance of making his contract.

West led the diamond king against four spades, which declarer allowed to hold. There was a likely trump loser plus a club loser or two, depending on the position of the club king. South saw that on a 3-3 heart break he could rid himself of both his club losers and end up with 11 tricks.

So he won the diamond queen continuation, cashed the top spades, ruffed his losing diamond with dummy’s last trump, then played ace, king and another heart, which he ruffed. When West discarded, South was philosophical — he still had the club play in reserve. But a club to the ace, then a club to the queen, saw West win with the king, and the club return spelled the demise of the game.

South failed to take his main chance in the right order — he should have tried to succeed against either a 3-3 or a 4-2 heart break. To cope with the 4-2 heart break, South needed two entries to dummy, but he had squandered an entry by ruffing his third diamond prematurely.

After playing his top trumps, declarer should next have taken the heart ace and king, then followed with a heart ruff in hand. Only now should he ruff the diamond. Another heart ruff would establish the fifth heart, and the club ace remains in dummy as the entry to it.

Berry Westra and Enri Leufkens of the Netherlands were the first and so far are the only pair to have won both a World Junior Championship and a Bermuda Bowl in partnership. They combined well on this hand from the World Championships in Beijing 20 years ago against Venezuela.

The sacrifice in five diamonds looks sensible, as it would not have been at all easy for South to lead the spade ace at trick one against four hearts, and take the spade ruffs needed to defeat the game.

However, the sacrifice turned out to be far more expensive than it might have appeared. Westra led the heart jack against five diamonds doubled, and when it was ducked all around, he switched to a trump. Now declarer made the slightly careless play of drawing three rounds of trump at once, ending in dummy; however, against most people he would not have been punished. It looks simple for declarer now to give up two clubs, but when Muzzia led a club to his queen, Westra found the fine play of ducking.

Westra hopped up with the ace on the next club play and led a second heart. Now there were no longer enough entries to dummy to establish the club suit. With the spade suit similarly dead, declarer finished three down, for minus 500.

Had declarer simply played the club queen at trick three, then the duck would have been countereffective and the defenders would have had to settle for down one.