Most of the critical decisions in the problems I present arise in the middle of the deal, but this time in a teams match you are simply faced with an opening-lead problem.

By the way, did that four-club call on a zero-count shock you? You wanted to take away bidding-space from your opponents, believing they had a good fit and the balance of high cards. Your opponents nonetheless sailed into a slam — but partner (a very good and highly aggressive player) ups the ante. Your lead!

Anyone familiar with the Lightner double might guess that, since you would have considered leading a club without the double, you have been asked to do something unusual, and the spade lead looks like the obvious choice. When your partner doubles a slam, you look for an unusual lead. So far so good, but I hope you avoided leading a fourth-highest spade four. If you did, your partner would ruff the first trick and would then consider underleading his club ace to get a second ruff.

Why? Well, I told you that your partner was an aggressive player. He can guess that six hearts doubled might also be the contract reached at the other table, and so that extra undertrick would be worth 300 points, or 7 IMPs. Since you know an underlead in clubs would be a disaster, lead a suit-preference spade eight, to steer partner away from the club suit.

Incidentally, which opponent, North or South, do you think should have retreated to the cold six no-trump?

Pablo Lambardi of Argentina has been a fixture on his country's international team for a couple of decades — remarkable for one who looks so young! He found an ingenious position in this deal from the finals of a major Pairs game in a recent Australian championship.

He held the South cards and declared one spade after opening one diamond and hearing one heart to his right, doubled by his partner, over which his call of one spade ended the auction. This bid can often be made on a three-card suit, since if opener does not have a heart stop or a rebiddable minor, this may be the least of all evils.

The defenders led four rounds of hearts, dummy pitching a club, with East ruffing in with the spade nine. Lambardi overruffed and led a spade to dummy and a club to the king. West ruffed and played ace and another spade.

As the third spade was led, and won in dummy, what was East to discard? If he pitched a diamond, declarer would come to hand in clubs, ruff a diamond, and take two more club tricks in the ending, since both North and East would be down to just clubs. When East chose instead to throw a club, Lambardi discarded his blocking club ace, and simply set up clubs for one loser.

Making one spade was a near top for him — the field was going down in clubs on the North-South cards, often doubled.

Today's deal shows two expert players handling a delicate grand slam from the Open Teams at Ostend last summer. In the auction shown, South (Per-Erik Austberg) knew his side had all the keycards after the five-no-trump bid, and his solid clubs looked like enough for him to accept the invitation.

Austberg won the heart lead and took two top trumps to test the suit, then cashed the club ace and ruffed a club. Now he ruffed a heart to reach hand to draw the last trump. On this, dummy discarded a diamond, but what should East throw? At the table he chose to discard a heart. Austberg crossed to the diamond ace and ruffed another heart. That left only West guarding the hearts, so when declarer took his two winning clubs, West was squeezed in the red suits.

Declarer had done the best he could, but was there a better defense against the grand? When Petter Tondel declared seven spades, Agnes Snellers as East pitched a small diamond on the third spade. Tondel now carefully played the diamond jack to the ace, felling East’s queen, ruffed a heart, then cashed the two remaining top clubs. East followed suit, but West had to throw a heart and a diamond. Correctly reading East as having the winning heart and club left, declarer triumphantly finessed the diamond eight at trick 12 to make his grand slam.

If declarer does not unblock his diamond jack early, he no longer has the option to finesse in diamonds.

This deal was played in the Pairs Championships at Ostend last summer. The deal does not exemplify any great technical theme, but it was so much fun for the defenders that I thought it worthwhile to show my readers.

If you focus solely on the North and South cards, you would expect North to open a strong no-trump and be transferred into two spades. You’d expect declarer to bring home his contract unless trumps were hostile. In fact, the spades are quite friendly, but things did not work out as expected.

Where Waseem Naqvi and Lee Rosenthal were defending, they pushed their opponents to the three-level, then showed how to maximize their trump holdings.

Rosenthal, West, started with the diamond ace, continuing with a diamond to Naqvi’s jack. Naqvi switched to his singleton club, then took a club ruff to play back a diamond. Declarer ruffed optimistically with the spade eight, overruffed by Rosenthal with the nine. A third round of clubs was ruffed with the spade king and overruffed by East with the ace.

Now Naqvi played another diamond, and declarer had to decide if the remaining spades were as in the diagram or the other way around. When he guessed wrong by ruffing with the spade 10, it was overruffed by the jack. Now a fourth round of clubs promoted Naqvi’s spade seven. The defense was finally out of ammunition, but they had made all five of their trumps for four down, and virtually all the matchpoints.

Even the experts sometimes lose their way. In today's deal declarer had two chances to make a doubled partscore, but missed both.

In one room West had made eight tricks in clubs, but in the other room South was playing for bigger stakes. Against two hearts doubled, Ricco van Prooijen led his singleton heart to the three, two and king. Now declarer misguessed by playing a spade to dummy’s jack at trick two. East, Marion Michielsen, took the spade queen and played the diamond five. Declarer went up with the ace and cashed three more spades, fatally discarding one of dummy’s clubs instead of the lone diamond. Michielsen ruffed the 13th spade and continued with the diamond queen, then switched to clubs. Van Prooijen could win the second club and play a killing third round of diamonds. Declarer ruffed this diamond low, but Michielsen overruffed and still had a trump trick. The defenders took one trick in each side-suit, plus three trump tricks.

If declarer discards dummy’s diamond on the fourth spade, Michielsen could ruff the fourth spade and play her diamond, but dummy then ruffs and plays a club. East can duck to allow West to win, but declarer discards dummy’s remaining club on the diamond continuation. A further diamond can then be ruffed with the heart jack. If East overruffs, that is the last trick for the defense. If she discards her last nontrump, declarer leads a low heart from dummy, endplaying East in trumps.

Today's deal shows one of the world's best technicians at work on a grand slam. Geir Helgemo sat South, and when he heard about his partner's two aces, he immediately jumped to seven no-trump. This was for him the last board of an eventually unsuccessful attempt to qualify for the mixed pairs final at Ostend last summer.

West led the diamond 10 to dummy’s ace, and at this point, Helgemo could see 12 top tricks. The working spade finesse might bring in the 13th trick in a pedestrian way but, of course, the first thing Helgemo did was to have a look at possible squeezes. So he went on to cash the other two top diamonds, discarding two more spades and getting the interesting news that East could not follow to the third diamond.

Helgemo followed up by taking his six heart winners, reducing to a five-card ending where East kept three clubs and two spades while West had one diamond, one spade and three clubs.

On the last heart West has to discard a club, to keep his singleton spade honor, while East has to throw a spade to keep clubs guarded. So no matter which opponent has the spade king, declarer should make the hand by leading a spade to the ace. That line would fail only if West has stayed silent with 7-5 distribution.

Note that in seven hearts, an initial club lead destroys the entry position, as declarer cannot cash the three top diamonds safely.

Sometimes the best stories have a sting in the tail. England international Barry Myers reported this deal, in which he had simultaneously played the hero and the goat.

Myers had experimented at his third turn with two hearts, meaning it as a lead-directing’ club raise; but he found his partner could not take a joke. Against three hearts the defenders led a top spade and shifted to trumps. Myers won the queen in hand and knocked out the club ace. The defenders forced dummy with a second spade, and Myers led the club king, ruffed by West, giving declarer the blueprint to the whole deal. The next spade was ruffed in dummy, and now it was up to declarer to find the legitimate route to bring home six of the seven last tricks.

The winning line is to play ace, king and a third diamond, ruffing with the heart jack, as Myers did. Now you play ace and a second trump, endplaying East with his heart eight to lead clubs into dummy’s tenace. If East ruffs in on an earlier diamond, you can instead overruff and draw trump, then concede a spade.

Very nice — so where’s the catch? As Myers discovered later on, on the third round of spades West had led his jack (squashing his partner’s 10), rather than a low spade. Accordingly, Myers’ remaining spades were now high, and he could simply have ruffed a diamond to hand and drawn trump. His hand would then have been high, and he would have had an overtrick.

Aces are made to take kings, they say. Up to a point, but there are always exceptions, as this deal from last year's European Open Championships in Ostend demonstrates. In fact, all the deals this week come from that event, marking the fact that the European championships are starting now.

In the auction South’s one-club opening was Polish, showing either a minimum balanced hand or 18-20 high-card points, and the two-no-trump rebid showed a balanced hand with extra values — but not necessarily any real club length.

Against three no-trump, West (Sue Picus) started with the spade queen, taken by declarer’s ace. She played four rounds of diamonds, and when Alex Kolesnik got in with the diamond jack, he put the heart king on the table. Had declarer ducked, she would have remained in control. But when declarer won the heart ace, the only way for her to get to the good diamond in dummy was to play a heart. Now Kolesnik was poised with the club ace and good hearts to cash, so declarer ended up a trick short.

Had declarer ducked the first heart, she could have won the heart continuation in dummy, cashed her diamond, and led a club toward her king to score her ninth trick sooner or later.

Conceding nine tricks in three no-trump would have represented an average result for East-West, but defeating the game was a near top.