Today's deal demonstrates that one should always go for that slim extra chance. You never know when the card gods are going to reward you for digging around to find a way to overcome a bad break, or an unfriendly lie of the cards.

When you declare four hearts, the spade queen is led to the first trick. It seems that you must rely on the diamond ace being onside. Can you do better, though?

There is indeed an extra chance when the diamond ace is wrong, and this is that East holds either the club king-queen or a doubleton club honor. To prevent East from gaining the lead when he has both club honors, you must duck the opening lead in both hands — a strange-looking play but one that can hardly cost since you have plenty of other losers to discard on the spade winner. After winning the next spade in hand, cross to dummy by leading the heart jack to the queen, then playing the club two, intending to insert the jack.

East must therefore split his honors, and you take East’s queen with the ace, play the heart two to dummy’s seven, then throw the club jack on the spade ace and lead the club 10. After ruffing away East’s king with your trump king, play the heart two to dummy’s seven. You can now throw a diamond on the good club nine, and can even lead a diamond to the king in the search for the overtrick.

This deal is from the final of the 1980 Australian National Open Teams. Which game contract do you think North-South should have reached? In my opinion one could argue that once North bid three spades over two hearts at his second turn to promise a good suit, maybe South should have considered raising to four spades.

Note that even with the bad break in spades, and the club and heart finesses failing, declarer should be able to find a way to bring home 10 tricks in spades by setting up the diamonds, or by ducking an initial club lead.

As it was, South declared three no-trump, and the club six was led to the 10, jack and queen. Declarer appreciated that the spades could wait. He ducked a diamond, and East overtook the diamond 10 with the jack to return a second club. West took the trick and cleared the clubs. Now South led another low diamond. West took the queen and played a fourth club, won by East’s nine.

At this point it looks easy to exit with a heart. But look what happens: declarer will cash the ace and king of hearts and catch East in a squeeze. Whether he discards a spade or a diamond, declarer will take the rest. Appreciating that, East found the shift to a spade into dummy’s tenace, cutting declarer’s communications and insuring a diamond trick for himself or a heart for his partner in the ending.

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.