Imagine you reach the small slam in spades and receive the lead of the trump 10. To bring home 12 tricks, you will need to set up hearts, but the entries to dummy are scarce. After you win the spade ace and unblock the heart king; what next? It might look natural to ruff a diamond to dummy and ruff a heart to hand. But if hearts do not break, you are out of trump and doomed to go down.

The best plan now is somewhat counterintuitive. Since you must rely on trumps to be 3-2 and hearts no worse than 4-2, you should next play the club queen out of your hand.

If West wins the king and plays a trump — as good as anything — you win in dummy with the spade jack, ruff a heart low in hand, cross to dummy with the club jack, and ruff a heart with the spade king. Then you can cash the diamond ace and ruff a diamond to draw the last trump, with dummy high.

If West ducks the club queen, you change tack altogether. You go to dummy with a trump, then ruff a heart with the spade king. Now you can cross to dummy and draw the last trump by leading the spade four to the jack. Next you play the heart ace and another heart. You concede one heart trick, but the last trump in dummy is the entry back to all the good hearts.

Over the last decade the standards in senior bridge have begun to rival the open game, and the world championships are contested at the very highest level. The American and German senior teams have met in the late stages of two recent world championships; each side has won one match narrowly. When a 64-board match is won by only 7 IMPs, several deals could have reversed the result. But this board from the final session settled the issue.

At both tables, West led a low diamond against five clubs. In the Open Room, John Schermer put in dummy’s 10, then played a spade to his king. West won with the ace and gave his partner a diamond ruff. East now shifted to the spade queen, but declarer ruffed it in dummy and ran the club queen successfully to make his contract.

In the Closed Room, declarer also won with dummy’s diamond 10, but then called for the club queen. When Steve Landen played low smoothly, South became worried that West would win from a singleton or doubleton club king and give his partner a diamond ruff. Then cashing the spade ace would result in one down. So South quite reasonably went up with the club ace and continued with the 10. However, East won with his king, led a spade to the king and ace, and received a diamond ruff for down one.

Plus 600 in one room and plus 100 in the other gave U.S.A. seniors 12 IMPs and the match.

Today's deal from a recent junior championships saw a good lead and smart declarer play rewarded with a nice pickup.

At both tables South’s two-spade opening showed a weak hand with spades and a minor. In one room where East had doubled four spades, West expected his partner to have values in all the three outside suits. So he led the diamond ace, and was rewarded when this led to an immediate diamond ruff and a quick one off.

At the other table, where East-West had passed throughout, West led a heart. Could declarer take advantage? After winning the heart ace, South ruffed a heart, drew trump (East pitching a heart), and ruffed another heart, the king appearing from East. He then led a club to the jack, king and ace. East returned a club, and declarer won, ruffed his last club, and paused to take stock.

West appeared to have started with five hearts. In addition, West was known to have the club 10 left (since he had played the jack on the first round and the 10 had not appeared yet). It followed that if either player was short in diamonds it was more likely to be West than East.

Accordingly, declarer led the diamond queen from dummy. East won his king and deceptively returned the diamond nine, but South rose with the jack, hoping that even if it lost to the king, West might be endplayed. His second chance came to pass; West won the diamond ace, but then had to give a ruff-sluff and the game came home.

The differences in approach between teams or rubber bridge and the pairs game is a subject that exercises my readers' curiosity. I am often asked whether there are deals that exemplify the difference in approach between one form of scoring and the other. Today's deal might clarify that point, because while the approach at pairs would not be straightforward here, the best play at teams is easy to identify.

Declaring four spades, you receive the lead of the diamond queen. With only four possible losers, you might decide at pairs to win the opening lead and draw trump, then to run the heart jack, or to lead a heart to the eight. You are playing for an overtrick, but with all the club and heart honors lying badly for you, the defenders are likely to prevail by winning the heart and reverting to diamonds. When East wins and plays a club through, you finesse, and lose both that trick and a further heart.

At teams or rubber bridge you would banish thoughts of an overtrick. Instead you win the diamond lead, draw trump, and exit with a diamond. When East wins to shift to a club, you take your ace and exit with a club. This forces the defenders to open up hearts for you. They can lead hearts through you once but not twice (and if East had shifted to a heart, not a club, at trick four, you would have set up a heart for a club discard).

In today's deal the North-South bidding was no more than adequate, but it was South's play that left room for significant improvement.

At his final turn North might well have converted six spades to six no-trump to protect his diamond tenace. When West obediently led the diamond two, declarer optimistically inserted dummy’s queen, but of course the finesse lost. At this point East did well to return a diamond, removing an entry from the table, rather than the more obvious heart shift. After winning with the diamond ace, declarer tested the clubs by cashing the ace and king, then ruffed a club high. Since the queen had not appeared, all that was left was to cash the two top spades, ending in dummy, and fall back on the heart finesse. Down one.

Can you see a better approach to the play? Suppose that declarer simply plays low from dummy at trick one. East wins with his jack but clearly cannot return the suit without conceding the 12th trick. Say that he switches to a heart; South wins with his ace and follows with three rounds of clubs as before. Then comes the spade ace, and another spade to dummy’s king allows another club to be ruffed high. The key difference is that after South draws the last trump, the diamond ace is still in dummy as an entry to the long club.

Finally, I leave my resourceful readers to work out what might have happened if West had found the lead of the diamond 10.

Today's deal comes from a head-to-head encounter in a match between two New York country clubs. At one table the North-South pair had missed their respectable slam, but were delighted to find that they had picked up a big swing when the player in the South seat had chosen the wrong time to apply expert technique.

If you simply focus on the heart suit, you have probably been taught that the right way to guard against a 4-1 break is to cash a top honor from hand and lead up to the king. However, that play would only be critical if there were no side-entries to dummy — and here the entries to the North hand plentiful.

So you can focus your energy on other problem distributions. Since you will never guess to play West for four hearts and are not bothered by East’s having four hearts to the jack as we have seen, all that remains in the way of problem distributions are the 5-0 breaks.

Correct technique in the slam after the club-jack lead runs around to the king is to lead a heart to the king. Now you can pick up East’s trump with ease because your spot cards allow for two finesses. Of course, if West had followed to the first heart, you would play a heart to the queen, then cross back to dummy with a spade for the marked finesse, if necessary.

There is nothing more satisfying than to find a hand where the defenders set their opponent a real challenge, and declarer was equal to the task.

This deal came up at the European championships a few years ago, and few defenders found the route to trouble declarer. A typical sequence of play saw the defenders cash their clubs and exit in trump, letting declarer ruff a heart to hand early and draw trump.

Far better for the defense is for West to cash the diamond ace at trick three and play a third club, attacking the trump suit. When this happened, declarer elected to ruff in hand. However, the 3-1 trump break coupled with the bad heart break meant that so long as West did not cover the spade jack, declarer could not avoid a fourth loser. If declarer drew trump, he would be unable to ruff out hearts; if he left trump out, West could overruff South on the third heart. (Note that if West covers the spade jack, declarer can ruff the next heart high and then finesse the spade eight to make his game.)

The winning line at trick three for declarer is to ruff the club on the table and discard his heart from hand. Now he can take a heart ruff and run the spade jack. West will gain nothing by covering, but if he ducks, declarer leads a spade to the queen. Next comes a second heart ruff, a spade to the ace, and dummy is high.

When South promised a spade control by raising North's five-heart jump to slam, West wisely decided to go passive with a trump lead.

Declarer now tried to improve on the simple chance that clubs would break favorably. He drew three rounds of trump, and when East discarded two diamonds, he realized that West was going to be very short in either clubs or diamonds. It would have been simple (but fatal) to cash the ace and king of clubs. Instead South found a very neat play. He took one top club, cashed three rounds of diamonds, pitching a spade from dummy, and found West with three cards in the suit, then led a club to dummy.

As expected, West showed out, but declarer was unfazed. He had reduced the hand to a five-card ending, where dummy had a singleton spade, a trump, and jack-third of clubs, while South had two trumps and his three spades left. He knew West was down to six spades, including the ace, so he led dummy’s spade and covered East’s card, endplaying West to give him a spade trick for the 12th winner.

Note that even if West had begun with fewer diamonds, and thus had a club left, a club play would have set up a club winner in dummy as an alternative route to the 12th trick. The only shape that would have been fatal to declarer was if West had started life with four diamonds and no clubs, when there is no winning line.