At the risk of stating the obvious, the defenders cannot see each other's cards. Conversely, declarer can see partner's cards — though this benefit is shared with the defenders. On this hand, South should have appreciated that if East got on lead, a heart through him would very likely scupper the contract. Therefore, declarer needed to use whatever wiles were at his disposal to disrupt defensive communications.

West led the heart king, to the three, seven and two. The opening leader could read East’s seven as being the lowest heart in his hand; therefore, it was likely to be the bottom of three cards. If East had held a doubleton heart, he would have played his highest, unless it was the queen. And if South had held four hearts, he would surely have bid them over partner’s two-club response. So West intelligently switched to the club 10. In with the ace, East returned a heart and down went the game.

Declarer had missed his opportunity for subterfuge. If he had dropped the heart nine under West’s ace, doubt might have been created in West’s mind. With the two still out, West would not have been able to gauge the heart position accurately. East might hold Q-7-2, and the seven might be the highest card available to him to signal liking for the lead.

As a rule of thumb in similar situations, declarer should ‘signal’ as if he were a defender, If he wants the opening leader to continue the suit, he should follow with a high card.

There was a wide range of systems in use at the NEC tournament in Japan last April.

Perhaps the most exotic of the methods in play was that of Martin Reid and Peter Newell. I have slightly expurgated their sequence to make it look less unusual to an American’s eye, although the auction basically went as shown below. But whatever the peculiarities of the auction in today’s deal, it produced arguably the most spectacular declarer play of the tournament.

When David Beauchamp led out two top spades against five diamonds, Reid ruffed and led a low heart to West’s ace and East’s upside-down-count heart eight, which suggested an original odd number of cards in that suit. Back came a third spade and Reid ruffed, cashed a second heart as South completed his echo, then ruffed a heart in dummy as both opponents followed.

At this point in the deal, Reid knew from the auction that East had only three spades and he appeared to have only three hearts. Declarer cashed the club ace and, when no honor appeared from West, it seemed reasonable to play him for a doubleton. If so, East would hold three clubs. So ruffing out the clubs and playing for diamonds to be 3-2 would not work; East would be left with the long trump.

So Reid cashed the second top club, ruffed a club with the diamond eight, and when it held, was able to score a high crossruff for the last four tricks. Very nicely done.

Today's deal brought back happy memories of sitting opposite Bob Hamman, who made a play very similar to this one, with a very similar result. The difference was that the seven IMPs he won were just enough to win the International Trials for selection for our team.

There was slightly less at stake in the featured deal, since it comes from the semifinals of the NEC tournament, held in Japan last April. Both pairs played five clubs doubled from the South seat, and both Wests led three rounds of spades, trumped by dummy’s nine. At one table East overruffed dummy to play back a heart. Declarer ruffed this, crossed to the diamond king to finesse in trumps, then ruffed a diamond to hand, and eventually drew trumps to claim down one when the club king put in an appearance. Not a triumph, but not a disaster either.

However when Roy Welland and Sabine Auken were East and West, defending against five clubs doubled, Auken led three rounds of spades. Declarer ruffed the third one with the club nine, on which Welland as East pitched a diamond rather than overruff! Declarer now led a diamond to the king and a club to the eight. Welland won with his jack and played back a club, leaving declarer with an eventual diamond loser.

That led to a penalty of plus 500 and the hardest-earned seven IMPs of the event. Welland’s team went on to reach the final, but lost to a Russia-Netherlands combination.

The finals of the NEC trophy in Yokohama this time last year turned out to be one-way traffic, in favor of the combined Russia-Netherlands team. This deal was symptomatic of what happened in the match.

In one room Evgeny Gladysh was delighted when the opponents came to rest at the three-level in his best suit. He started with ace and another spade, as declarer, Sabine Auken, pitched a club. She then led a trump to the king and ace. Gladysh switched to a heart, and Auken won and played four rounds of the suit to pitch a club before playing any more trump. That allowed Sjoert Brink to ruff in from the short trump hand, and now the contract was down three for minus 150.

In the other room Andrei Gromov played in diamonds, but a level lower and two tricks better. Jacek Pszczola for Team Welland (known as Pepsi) led a heart against two diamonds. Gromov won and did not play on trumps; instead, he led a spade to the queen and ace.

Pepsi now switched to a club to the ace, and Michal Kwiecien returned a club. Gromov won the king, crossed to a top heart, then pitched his last club on the spade king. He ruffed a spade, led his third heart to dummy, then ruffed a club and got out with a low diamond. Kwiecien overtook the diamond eight with the jack and returned a diamond, but Pepsi was now endplayed to concede a diamond to Gromov’s king for eight tricks, and 6 IMPs to Russia.

What a difference a day makes. In the semifinals of the NEC tournament we had seen Sabine Auken and Roy Welland unable to put a foot wrong; on the next day the boot was on the other foot.

Today’s deal was just one instance of that. Their opponents even managed to locate the correct eight-card fit on what appeared to be a straight toss-up as to whether game or slam might be better — not to mention in which suit one should come to rest.

In the other room, where Rees Milner and Hemant Lall had somewhat pessimistically decided to come to rest in four hearts, they had hopes of gain when all the key suits split so badly.

However, Sjoert Brink and Mikhail Krasnosselski avoided the first hurdle when they landed in six spades, not six hearts, and overcame the second hurdle on opening lead. Either minor-suit lead takes the entry out of dummy prematurely, but you can hardly blame Sabine Auken for leading her singleton heart. Declarer won, tested trumps, then tested hearts, finding the doubly bad news. Then he went to the club ace, played the heart ace, ruffed out the hearts, cashed the last top trump from hand, then ruffed a club to dummy.

East could overruff, but then was endplayed; he had to lead diamonds back into dummy’s tenace. So the swing was 13 IMPs to Russia instead of the same number the other way.

The NEC trophy normally held in February, took place last year in April, so that the international field could then play a week later in the Yeh Bros tournament at the same venue.

In the final of the NEC event, Mikhail Krasnosselski for the winners made a very nice play here. He reached five clubs doubled, and after the lead of the heart king, he knew that diamonds rated to be 7-0.

One reasonable plan now would be to cash two rounds of clubs ending in dummy, and take the spade ace to discard a heart loser. Then he would lead a diamond to the nine, and hope the defenders could not engineer a diamond ruff. This line works today, but would fail if South were 6-4-0-3, perhaps somewhat more likely than his actual hand, given the auction. Krasnosselski found a better solution: He won the heart ace, ran five trumps, then led a diamond to the queen and ace. That forced East to win and return a diamond or spade to dummy, letting declarer discard one heart loser and then take the diamond finesse.

In the other room four spades had gone down one, when North did not raise clubs and South could not bid on to the five-level on his own, so Russia gained 10 IMPs. Credit Sjoert Brink, North, for his three-club call here; raising two-level overcalls encourages partner when he has bid with a good suit (and will teach him to have one next time if he has come in with an insufficient excuse).

The NEC tournament in Yokohama is now one of the strongest and best established invitational team events in the world. After an initial Swiss format, the top eight teams go through to a knockout phase. Today's deal (and indeed all this week's deals) comes from the later stages of last April's event.

Both Wests in our featured match led a club against three no-trump. David Bakhshi led the seven, and East won cheaply and continued the suit. Declarer won in dummy perforce (Bakhshi helpfully following with the eight to suggest spade values whereas his opposite number was not so generous). Both declarers now led a low diamond to the jack and a diamond back to the queen.

The unsuccessful defender — East — now shifted to a heart (perhaps playing partner for the spade ace and heart king) and declarer claimed 600, while Bakhshi’s partner ,David Gold, unblocked his club honor, on which his partner played his highest missing club spot, then shifted to spades for three down.

Gold’s defense was right in theory as well as in practice, but Bakhshi’s suit-preference signal at trick two had made his partner’s life far easier. The general rule is that when a defender has a choice of irrelevant small cards or when he knows that his partner knows exactly what his holding is, he should try to give his partner a suit-preference signal, as here. In virtually every deal the defenders have a chance to signal suit-preference — even if in practice they rarely do so.

By reading, and by learning from other people's mistakes, the expert can sometimes get the play right in a position he has not actually encountered before. Today's deal provides such an example, which comes from the final of the 1986 Australian Interstate Championships. Against four spades West led the heart queen, and declarer took it with dummy's ace to try to camouflage the position as best he could, while East discouraged. Now declarer came to hand, drawing just one round of trumps, then led a diamond. Put yourself in West's shoes: Would you win the diamond ace, or would you duck?

When you’ve made your decision, compare what happened at the table. West knew that his side had no tricks coming in the majors, and that he needed his partner to have the diamond jack — on the bidding there was no chance that he could hold the club king. So on the first round of diamonds West contributed the queen and dummy the king. On the diamond continuation, East rose with the jack and put the club 10 on the table. Curtains for declarer!

As you can see, if West ducks the first diamond, he can subsequently be endplayed in diamonds to lead clubs. And if he goes up with the ace, he can later be thrown in with a heart (declarer pitching a club from dummy on the third heart) to lead clubs, again after the trumps and diamonds have been stripped off.