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.

Earlier this year eight pairs participated in the Belgian open team trials for the European Championships in Opatija, Croatia, that concluded last week. The trials were played over 14 sessions, where each session consisted of three matches against every other table. The top three pairs would qualify. With one day (two sessions) remaining, everything seemed decided as Philippe Coenraets and Steven De Donder, in third place, had a 43 VIP margin over fourth place. Patrick Bocken and Olivier Neve, however, did manage to come back in a direct encounter with Steven and Philippe. Neve, sitting South, brought home this five-club contract elegantly.

After the lead of the diamond king and ace (East showing an odd number), West switched to the spade queen. Neve took the ace and realized that East rated to have seven spades and three diamonds, and thus would be short in either hearts or clubs. Since North-South had nine clubs and seven hearts between them, it was far more likely that East’s shortage was in clubs.

So South cashed just one top club, played the heart ace and queen, then finessed the heart 10 as East helplessly discarded. Now he could take the heart king to discard a spade, ruff a spade back to hand, and finally could take the marked trump finesse for an impressive plus 600.

Note that if declarer uses his heart entry to take the early finesse in trumps, he can never get back to hand to take the heart finesse.

After the lead of the spade jack against three no-trump, South won in hand and led a heart to dummy's king, then, before putting all his eggs in one basket, he tried to develop the diamond suit by making the correct play of running the eight. West won cheaply and pressed on with spades (won by declarer in hand), then scored his heart ace and played a third spade. Declarer cashed his heart queen and pitched a club, but found hearts were 4-2, and so he needed to try to develop a second diamond winner.

He led a diamond to his nine, and West scored his queen, cashed his spade winner (East and South pitching clubs), and exited with a low club. That left declarer with a diamond loser at trick 13 when the king did not drop.

Down one, and South moved on to the next deal, never realizing that he had failed to take his best play for his game, which was to run the heart nine at trick two, rather than leading to the king. When he leads to an honor in dummy at his next opportunity, this play brings in the heart suit for three tricks (all that declarer needs) when the suit is 3-3 or the heart ace is doubleton onside. That is a combined chance that comes in at over 50 percent.

The problem with leading to the king or queen initially is that East can duck with honor-third, thus killing the suit.

In today's deal South, declarer in six spades, claimed he was unlucky; he had three good chances, taken them in the correct order, and had come up empty on all of them. Do you agree?

What happened was that West led a heart to South’s ace. South took the spade ace-king (revealing that there was a trump loser). He then played the club ace-king, ruffed a club to hand, and found that this suit was also not behaving. He later took the diamond finesse for down one, being doubly annoyed to find that the diamond queen would have dropped. Was he right to be upset?

South was admittedly unlucky, but a slightly more accurate play (based on the knowledge that hearts were 6-3) would have succeeded. The better line at trick four is to cash the club ace and take a heart ruff. Next, cross to the club king, and when the club jack falls, you take a second heart ruff. Now exit with a low spade.

If West plays a club, your club 10 in dummy means you can claim 12 tricks, so West must play a diamond. Dummy plays low and East’s queen is captured, whatever he does. This approach relies on East’s having six hearts and West’s having either the diamond queen or 10.

Had a club honor not appeared on the second round of the suit, declarer could have reverted to his original line.

I am often asked why I prefer the lead of the king from ace-king rather than the ace.

Today’s deal exemplifies one of the admittedly minor advantages my method has.

Imagine your partner leads the diamond ace against four hearts. Now plan the defense.

If your partner has led from the diamond ace-king, you might need to unblock the diamond queen to tell partner to lead a low diamond to you, for a spade through declarer. The clubs in dummy present a threat of sorts, since declarer might be able to discard either a slow or fast loser on the 13th club.

However, there is a real danger that some layouts exist equivalent to that shown in the answer. Here a careless and extravagant signal of the diamond queen will let declarer play the diamond suit for only one loser by finessing the diamond 10 at some point in the hand. On the actual hand you want partner to continue playing diamonds (a spade switch by West would be fatal to the defense) so signal with the diamond six, the highest card you can afford. Partner will, you hope, continue with diamonds, and in due course declarer will lose two tricks in spades and two in diamonds, for one down.

If the diamond ace denies the king, then East would never have any thought of unblocking a high diamond at the first trick. If your partnership frequently leads unsupported aces (especially in bid and supported suits), the king-lead from ace-king has a clear advantage.

Declarer was confronted with a problem here that might have defeated a better player than he. After an uninformative auction to three no-trump, West led from his long suit. South took no time at all to put up dummy's club 10 and win a cheap club trick, but with that play he had given up his best legitimate play for the contract.

The heart blockage meant declarer had just three tricks in both hearts and clubs, so needed to set up a second spade trick. When he ducked East’s spade jack at trick two, that player astutely shifted to a diamond, clearing the suit. When he got in with spades, he cashed the long diamond.

The solution is disarmingly simple — if you look at the problem correctly. The nine tricks declarer should try to take are four hearts, three clubs, and two aces. In order to create an entry to dummy’s hearts, play low from dummy at trick one, and win the trick in hand with a high club. By preserving your two low clubs, you can then play to unblock the heart honors from hand and lead a low club toward dummy to force an entry to the board.

Curiously, after his actual play, declarer can come close to making if he plays the spade ace at trick six. West must unblock his king, and now when declarer cashes the top clubs, East must reciprocate by discarding his spade queen to let West win the spade 10!