The contract of four hearts has nine top winners, but the 10th trick is harder to find. The defenders have to steer clear of leading diamonds, but a normal line of defense will see West's spade-king lead going to the ace. The spade four is ruffed; now how should declarer advance?

The first key-play is to cash the heart ace and lead a heart to the king. Now, as declarer expects West to have the bulk of the defenders’ high cards and East has turned up with the spade ace, he should assume the diamond ace is offside. Since South needs a diamond trick for his contract, he must assume West does not have two out of the diamond queen, jack and eight.

South leads the diamond 10 from dummy (maybe East will forget to cover from honor-third or honor-fourth?), planning to let it run, but covering East’s honor if necessary. After the jack, king and ace have been played, a third spade comes back. South ruffs, crosses to the dummy with a club, and leads a diamond. He must guess whether to put in the seven or nine.

Say he gets it right and puts in the seven, forcing the queen. No lead can hurt South now, since dummy still has a small trump left on a spade return. Declarer makes five hearts, four clubs and a diamond for 10 tricks.

Although this was a flat board from the 2009 European championship, it was certainly not dull.

In our featured room North should surely have heeded the warning signs of West’s sequence of bids, which surely suggested fair values with a heart stack. But in three hearts doubled, neither the play nor the defense was sparkling. West led the club ace and switched to a diamond to East’s ace. Declarer won the diamond return and played the spade jack to the king and ace. He now cashed the spade queen and ruffed a spade with the seven. West overruffed and declarer had to go two down, for minus 500.

Declarer should have ruffed the third spade high. Say West discards a club; now declarer ruffs a club and plays a winning spade, discarding his last diamond. West can trump, and play a diamond, but declarer ruffs and plays his last club to escape for one down.

In the other room the English defended two hearts doubled, and David Gold showed how the hand should be defended. He led a trump at trick one, and declarer won with the four in his hand (a rare event!) and played the club jack. West carefully went up with the ace and switched to the heart queen, his third good play. This was the only sequence of plays to ensure the defeat of two hearts, though in practice when declarer lost his way, he managed to go two down. No swing!

After North makes a simple raise to two hearts, South would pass with a minimum hand or raise to three hearts obstructively. His three-club call suggests extra shape or high cards looking for help in clubs. North has the good combination of a doubleton club and four trumps, enough to raise to game.

West leads a low spade, and after you decide to play low from dummy, with which card should you win? The queen is best, as later you will want to use the 10 for afinesse, so you can cash the spade ace for a diamond discard.

Next you can afford to cash one top trump, but not both, as you would like to ruff two clubs in dummy, but must give up a club to do so. If two rounds of trump are played, the defenders can surely arrange for the hand with three trumps to win their side’s club trick and return a trump. Then the two club ruffs are reduced to one.

The best way forward at trick three is a low club. Declarer can now make 11 tricks, whatever the return. After taking the trump ace, you lead the spade 10 to the jack; then cash the spade ace for a diamond discard. Now take the club ace and ruff a club. Next lead a diamond to the now bare ace for another club ruff. All that the defense can muster is one more trump trick.

North-South have a big spade fit and a decent number of high-cards, but with matching red-suit shapes and wasted values in spades, game is a fairly delicate spot.

When West leads the club five against four spades, declarer has to finesse at once, with prospects extremely slim if it fails. However, when dummy’s queen wins the trick, he is in good shape to bring home the game if he is careful. Before you read on, have a look at the full deal and consider what your best plan is.

At the table declarer drew trump, then relied on the diamonds to behave, and was disappointed at the result. In essence South was following a 50 percent line. Instead, after drawing trump, play the club ace and ruff a club, eliminating that suit altogether, and then play ace and another heart.

The defenders can take their two heart winners, but will then have to break the diamonds or give a ruff and discard. As the cards lie, the best the defenders can do is to have East win the third heart and play a low diamond, but declarer will put in the 10 and cannot misguess on the next round. Without seeing all four hands, West would probably win the third heart and lead a low diamond, playing his partner for the A-10. Either way, declarer comes home with his game, remembering that it is always better to have the opponents lead a critical suit than to have to broach it yourself.

Can you spot the winning defense in this deal from the 0-10,000 MP Swiss at Saint Louis last spring? It looks normal enough — if slightly aggressive — to reach four spades with the North-South cards. All it appears to need is a decent break in trumps, so you would probably want to be in game.

On a heart lead, South ruffed as East deceptively played his king (disguising the position of the minor honors in the suit) and elected to play the club queen. Quite reasonably he assumed that he could always play on diamonds later, and that he might learn something to his advantage if he went after clubs first.

West correctly ducked the first club, then when South persisted with his attack on clubs, won the club king with the ace, East suggesting a doubleton in the process. What should West do now?

At the table West played a diamond and declarer took 11 tricks. But the winning answer (though you might argue that this would be impossible to find at the table) is to play the third club to let partner discard a diamond. Then you must find the Merrimac coup of shifting to the diamond king to remove the entry to the clubs from dummy.

If declarer ducks to preserve his entry, you must play another diamond, and now dummy is dead. By virtue of his diamond discard, your partner can now overruff any attempt to ruff a diamond in dummy. Beautiful, isn’t it?

The second placed team in one of the major national events from last spring nationals at St. Louis, wrote ruefully about the one that got away. As the writer indicated, no one likes to lose an event by one victory point. Had his team got this deal right against the eventual winners, it would have swung 16 victory points in their favor, turning a 13-7 loss into a 15-5 win. That would have meant they finished first by a single victory point.

At the writer’s table, the transfer auction had put South as declarer and the play was straightforward. South won the spade lead and ruffed a spade, then cashed two trumps. He followed up with three rounds of diamonds (ruffing the third in hand), ruffed a spade to reach dummy, and then could run the heart 10 and claim his 12 tricks. West was forced either to return a heart into declarer’s tenace, or give a ruff-sluff that would allow the heart loser to be discarded from dummy.

At the other table, Barbara Kasle and Drew Cannell for the victorious Koslove team reached slam, after a different transfer auction, one in which North was declarer, having shown a singleton spade and a diamond control.

Now an initial heart lead would have set the slam and swung 17 IMPs, but after a diamond lead, Cannell duplicated the line of play from the other room, to achieve the same endplay and flatten the board.

Almost a complete top swung on a rather subtle point of defense in this deal from the open pairs at Saint Louis last spring.

As East, you feel obliged to compete again when the opponents come to a stop in two spades. You bid two no-trump as takeout with four hearts, which shows your shape nicely — if perhaps suggesting a somewhat better hand than you actually have.

Your partner apparently takes you seriously when he doubles the opponents in three spades, then leads the club 10 against this contract. You can cash two clubs, everyone following. What should you do next? It seems normal enough to play a third club winner, doesn’t it? On this trick, East pitches a heart, while your partner also discards a heart, the eight, playing standard signals. Now what should you do?

The answer is that you’d better lead a fourth club! Declarer can ruff with the spade queen or 10, but West will complete his partner’s good work by establishing a trump promotion when he discards on this trick.

At this point West’s spade K-9-6 will be good for two trump tricks once East produces that invaluable spade jack. But note that if West overruffs at his first turn, he has undone all his partner’s efforts; the second spade trick now vanishes. This maneuver of building an extra trump winner by forcing declarer or dummy to waste a high honor, then refusing to overruff, is one of the most satisfying forms of trump promotion.

Sam Loyd, the American puzzler, was adept at posing puzzles that produced unexpected answers. With that in mind, consider this deal from the pairs at the St. Louis Nationals. At double-dummy, three no-trump by East looks to be playable — though only because of the 7-0 diamond break, of course. You need only a smidgen of luck in the clubs and hearts, but do not appear to be in luck today. However, three no-trump did indeed make on the deal when Mark Feldman was North and Billy Pollack was South. How did that happen, given that the two players are top experts?

The answer is that it was Pollack who played three no-trump as South, on the auction shown. The defenders led a low heart to the 10 and ace. You and I would try to win the heart continuation, then run diamonds — but the opponents might object. So how would you get to dummy to cash that diamond suit?

Well, at trick two, East could see diamonds were running, so decided desperate measures were called for. A spade shift might look best to you or me, at both first or second glance, but East switched to the club 10, hoping to find his partner with the goods there.

As declarer, Pollack followed smartly with the eight. To clarify the position, West overtook with the club jack and continued with the queen! Pollack won, crossed to dummy with his “sure” entry of the club seven and ran the diamonds for nine tricks. Easy game, bridge!

Today's deal sees one of the top pairs in the country with egg all over their faces. The deal comes from the Vanderbilt Trophy, the major knockout event of the Saint Louis Nationals last March.

Put yourself in West’s shoes. Because you haven’t agreed whether two no-trump over a possibly short opening bid of one club is for the red suits or the minors, you overcall one heart and find yourself defending four spades. The club king lead goes to the four, two and seven, with partner’s two being discouraging.

Accordingly, you shift to a low heart, which goes to the two in dummy, and declarer takes partner’s nine with the ace. Are you still thinking? Next, declarer leads the diamond ace, drawing the two, five and seven; then the diamond six comes next, and you follow with the three. Now what?

Whatever you do, it is too late. Declarer didn’t ruff the diamond six; instead he pitched dummy’s club to execute a Scissors Coup, cutting your communications with your partner. After the club discard from dummy, the heart ruff has disappeared. Your partner can win the spade ace, but cannot find a way back to your hand.

Contract made — and the author of the play described it as an immaterial coup. Why? Because at the other table his teammates had bid and made five diamonds with the East-West cards, to collect plus 600. As a consequence, even if the game had gone down, declarer would have gained a sizeable swing.