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.

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.