In today's deal from last year's Saint Louis Nationals, consider East's problem defending four spades. Your partner leads the diamond king, and when it holds, he continues with the jack. Declarer wins and draws trump in three rounds, partner following as you pitch encouraging hearts, then ruffs the third diamond to hand.

At this point South exits with a low heart. Your partner puts up the queen and plays a second heart to you, declarer following again. You have reached a five-card ending with dummy holding a trump and four clubs, while you have two hearts and three clubs.

At the table, East exited with a low club. Declarer’s jack held, and now South’s only concern was if one defender had all the remaining three clubs. Whatever he did, he couldn’t go wrong.

In this ending, a slightly more thoughtful player would have exited with the club queen, protecting against the possibility that his partner had jack-third or jack-doubleton of clubs left. Now declarer would have a losing option as to which hand to win the club shift in.

However, a defender who paused to count would know that declarer rated to hold precisely 5-2-2-4 distribution — and if not, he would have a third heart. Either way, continuing with a third heart wouldn’t help him at all, since a ruff-sluff would give him an irrelevant discard. If West had the club jack, this beats the contract by force; if not, declarer is on a club guess.

When the spade queen is led against four hearts, it seems you need the diamond ace to be onside, since you have one club and two diamonds to lose.

However, you have two extra chances: The first is that if West has both club honors, you might throw him in on the third round of clubs, pitching a diamond from hand. But note that if West, a passed hand, holds both club honors, the diamond finesse will surely succeed.

However, there is one additional chance: that East holds the club K-Q. In that case, to prevent East from gaining the lead and firing a diamond through you, the opening lead should be ducked in both hands! Win the next spade in hand, lead the heart jack to dummy’s queen, then play the club two. If the club honors are split so that West wins the first club, you will dispose of a diamond on the spade ace, cash the club ace (in case the remaining club honor falls), then fall back on the diamond finesse.

As the cards lie, though, East must split his honors. Take East’s queen with the ace, play the heart king to the ace, then throw the club jack on the spade ace and lead the club 10.

After ruffing out the club king with a high heart, you can cross to dummy’s heart 10 and pitch a diamond on dummy’s master club. Now you may lead a diamond to the king to play for the overtrick.

Depending on how you look at it, it is either a truism or a cliche that second hand plays low and third hand plays high. Fourth-hand play doesn't really have any such rules, though. You either win or you duck — and normally the question about which to do is easy to answer.

But not always: Today’s deal comes from the 1998 Junior European Championships, declared by Igor Grzejdziak. Igor had reached four hearts, and West led the spade eight, playing third and fifth leads. Note that the spade-six lead would have allowed declarer to cover with the spade seven and avoid a spade loser altogether.

However, on the lead of the spade eight, Igor sized up the position very quickly and played low from dummy. When East also played small, declarer also ducked in his hand. Cashing the club ace could have been a disaster with a slightly different layout, so West continued with the spade six. Declarer took East’s jack with the ace, played three rounds of hearts, and later finessed in spades. This allowed him to throw a club loser on the fourth spade, and a club ruff made a total of 10 tricks, thanks to declarer’s very imaginative deceptive move at the first trick.

Just for the record: Note that on the lead of, or shift to, the diamond jack at trick two, declarer might have ducked THAT trick too!

In today's deal West led the spade seven against three no-trump, to the queen and ace. Declarer next played a heart to dummy's jack, then the heart 10, East following with the seven and the three to show count, both ducked by West. Declarer next led a heart to his queen, East discarding the spade two. Plan the rest of the defense as West, after winning the heart ace.

In real life West woodenly returned a second spade, and declarer soon claimed his contract. West should have seen that declarer certainly had a second spade trick coming, but more importantly, East would not have pitched a spade if continuing the suit was the way to beat the contract. East’s spade discard here might carry suit-preference clues to his partner, so the low spade ought to suggest values in clubs. Even so, it is quite difficult to see the best way to generate the necessary three tricks from clubs.

West needs to find declarer with ace-doubleton in clubs, but he needs to be careful in case declarer has A-J or A-10. To cater for that eventuality, West must switch to the club nine. This will go to the queen and declarer’s ace. The best declarer can do now is cash the winning heart and play on diamonds. However, West will win the fourth round and continue with the club king and another club. With East’s 10-7 poised over dummy’s 8-6, declarer must lose two more club tricks, and go one down.

A decade ago Marty Fleisher and Eric Rodwell paired up in a first-time partnership to win the Cavendish pairs. Today's deal comes from that event.

Rodwell is never one to hold back when game is in the offing, and on this occasion, when his partner forced him to act at the three-level, he felt he had something in reserve, hence his jump to four spades. Best defense is a club lead — and maybe East should have bid three clubs over the double to help his partner.

Still, West’s choice of the heart ace, to determine which minor to shift to, was a reasonable one. Unluckily for him, the club shift came too late. Rodwell played low, and East took the jack and exited with a second heart. Rodwell ruffed and played off the top spades, ruffed a second heart, then cashed four diamonds, ending in dummy. Now he led a trump, and in the two-card ending East had to play clubs into dummy’s tenace to concede the 10th trick.

As mentioned above, the idea of playing that responder to a weak-two can make lead-directing calls after his RHO has doubled is a sensible one, and dates back remarkably far. (50 years ago.) This idea was first proposed in Bridge World and is called McCabe, after its inventor. The idea is that when second hand doubles a weak-two bid, new suits at the three-level by the next player show tolerance for partner’s suit, but are primarily for the lead of the bid suit.

There was a defense to South’s contract of four spades on this deal but it required imagination by West. It proved no surprise when he failed to find the right switch at trick two – to be fair, not many players would.

The opening lead of the club king was easy enough but a glance at dummy made it clear that his partner could hold virtually nothing in the way of high cards. With just three defensive tricks himself, West decided that the only chance lay in finding East with a void in diamonds. Accordingly, he switched to the diamond jack, and dummy’s queen won. True, when West took his trump ace, he was able to give East a ruff, but it was only a loser that he trumped, and now the diamond king had no further part to play.

Do you have any thoughts on how the defenders might have prevailed? Try the effect of the diamond king at trick two! Declarer takes this and plays trump, but West wins the first round and follows with the diamond jack. Dummy’s queen is ruffed away and South is still left with a losing diamond.

It may be slightly fortunate to find East with just sufficiently good hearts to deny declarer four tricks in the suit, but this was surely more likely than finding him with a void in diamonds. In any event, the contract will probably still be defeated on best defense if East does have a diamond void.

Today's deal offers an intriguing red herring, but if you focus on the essentials, you will not get it wrong.

As South you should jump to four spades over the opponents’ opening bid of one heart. Yes, you might buy short spades and long clubs opposite, but even if you do, your spades are almost self-supporting, and playing a minor takes you up a level. Additionally, you give far less information away with an auction of this sort than you do if you start with an action such as a Michaels Cue-bid.

Suppose you achieve your target — being doubled in four spades. Dummy may not offer quite as much as you had hoped for, but you ruff the opening lead and play the club 10 from hand, which West wins. That player continues with a second heart, and you ruff away East’s jack. Now what?

You must avoid the Greek gift of playing to ruff a club in dummy. If you do so, you will then have to shorten your trumps to get back to hand, and you will find that you will have to surrender trump control — and with it, the contract.

Better is to ignore the club ruff and simply to play the spade ace and jack. The defense will do best to win and shorten you again, but you can draw the last trump and then knock out the club ace, making your contract when that suits breaks 3-3 and spades are 3-2.

It is a foul libel, put out by the players, that the only people who direct tournaments are those who are not good enough to play in them. One example of a director who is an expert player is Olin Hubert, the hero of today's deal.

Olin is old enough to have been playing in an era when his partner’s bid of three hearts showed a good hand, not a pre-emptive raise. Against four hearts, West led the diamond ace and continued the suit. Olin won in hand and crossed to the spade jack to run the heart queen.

When West won and returned a spade, Olin had four possible lines of play. He could run the hearts, then the spades, pitching a diamond, or he could pitch a club on the last one. Equally, he could run spades, pitching a diamond, then take the hearts, or he could pitch a club on the spades before taking the hearts. What looks best to you?

Olin correctly drew two only rounds of trumps, then cashed the remaining spades, discarding a club from hand. His plan was to find East with the club queen in addition to his original holding of five diamonds.

Now, on the run of the trumps, East needed to retain the diamond jack, so had to bare his club queen. Olin led the club king from hand at trick 12 to smother the queen, and West had to bring the entryless dummy back to life at trick 13. Contract made!