Despite your opponents bidding and raising spades, you still manage to find your way to the heart game. Incidentally, do you like your partner's decision to drive to four hearts? I do. North knew you had made a vulnerable overcall on a suit headed by at most one top honor, so you had to have at least six cards in the suit, with approximately opening values. Therefore, bidding game was a sensible decision.

Not surprisingly West leads the spade king, then the queen and continues with a spade to East’s ace, which you ruff. When you draw trump you find East has three. How do you virtually guarantee your contract now?

It looks reasonable to try the minor-suit finesses, but if you do so, you can guarantee that the diamond finesse will lose – after all, what did east open on. Now you will be reduced to the very slim chance of the club king falling in two rounds to make your game.

There is a much better approach, based on the fact that East is known to have eight cards in the majors along with both minor-suit kings. Simple arithmetic demands that he must have either a singleton or doubleton king in one of those suits. So duck a diamond completely. Ruff the spade return, then on the next diamond, rise with the ace. Either East’s king will fall or he must have king singleton or doubleton in clubs, so you can pick up that suit without loss.

Since today is Christmas Day, I'm going to show a deal where East presented the opponents with a Christmas present. Put yourself in his position to see if you can do better.

You might argue that East followed a cowardly route in the auction, but it did seem reasonable to think that the majority of his hand looked wasted on offense. As you can see, though, the favorable lies in spades and diamonds meant that four clubs would have crawled home.

Against three hearts, partner leads the club king, and you discourage, suggesting an odd number. Declarer wins and leads a heart to the ace, partner pitching the club four. Then comes a second heart on which partner pitches the club nine. What now?

At the table East missed the point altogether here. Partner’s low club spots (remember he started life with six clubs to the K-Q-J so he doesn’t have many small clubs!) must suggest suit preference for diamonds. Since you may need to lead diamonds through twice, start now.

At the table East reverted to clubs and West could do nothing but return a spade, letting East exit with a third heart. But declarer won the heart queen and led out the spade queen. Now he had time to take advantage of the fall of the spade intermediates to set up the spade eight for the discard of a diamond: nine tricks made.

In four spades it looks natural to win the diamond lead in hand and lay down the spade ace, planning to cash the trump king. Remarkably, after one top trump, the game can no longer be made against the 4-1 trump break! West will ruff in on the diamonds, draw dummy's trump, and cash three hearts.

Suppose instead that you play a heart after cashing one round of trump. East will win and deliver a diamond ruff. The switch to the club king will then set up a fourth trick for the defenders, to go with West’s trump queen.

Since the contract will be easy if trumps break 3-2, you should assume a 4-1 trump break and direct your efforts to countering that. The answer is to lead a low trump at trick two!

What can the defenders do now? If West wins with the queen and crosses to his partner’s hand with a heart to receive a diamond ruff, you can draw trump when you regain the lead. If instead West ducks the first round of trump, you can duck another round. West has to win his queen this time and can do nothing to harm you. Whether he plays a club, or plays two rounds of hearts to force dummy to ruff, you will be able to draw his remaining trumps and run the diamond suit.

The message: When you can afford to lose a trump trick, lose it at a time when the defenders can do you no harm.

Here is a neat declarer play by Barnet Shenkin's from a Pairs game where he shrugged off the nasty splits to bring home his four-spade contract.

West led the diamond king to Shenkin’s ace — and, yes, as the cards lie, it might have been better to duck this trick). Shenkin then played the spade king at trick two to East’s ace. The diamond jack came next, followed by a third round of the suit, ruffed by Shenkin, who got the bad news in trumps when he cashed the spade queen. Undaunted, he continued with a heart to dummy’s king (it would not have profited West to ruff) and a club to his jack. Shenkin then cashed the club ace and played a spade to dummy’s nine. East was already starting to feel the pressure. He pitched one club and one heart, but was really under the gun when Shenkin cashed the spade jack.

A heart discard was out of the question, so he had to let go a club. Shenkin then exited with the club queen, putting East on play with the king in the two-card ending with the heart Q-10 left, obliged to lead into dummy’s tenace. Contract made; but have you noticed the defensive slip? East should win his spade ace and return the heart 10 — suit preference — to let West ruff. Now a diamond to the jack allows the defenders to take a second ruff and set the hand. That is why ducking the first trick was essential.

Four spades might have been best today here, but when West led the club jack against three no-trump, it left South in the awkward position of having no sure re-entry to hand. He could go after spades, but if he did, he might find himself at the mercy of the heart position unless the defenders continued playing on clubs (and even then there would only be eight top tricks). Did that mean it was right to play on diamonds immediately? No, because he would then have no certain entry back to his remaining club winners.

So, before tackling the diamond suit, South cashed the three top clubs, both defenders following. When he led the diamond 10, West covered with the king, and the second key moment of the deal had arrived.

If declarer had won this trick with dummy’s ace, then he would soon discover that East still had a stopper in the suit. Needing four diamond tricks, declarer would have to play a fourth round of diamonds. East (the danger hand) would gain the lead, and a heart switch would allow the defenders to score three hearts, two clubs and one diamond trick to beat the game.

Foreseeing this possibility, and needing only four diamond tricks rather than five, declarer allowed West’s diamond king to win. Now the safe hand (West, who could not attack hearts) was on lead, and though he had two clubs to cash, declarer would claim nine winners as soon as he regained the lead.

In this deal, from the 2002 European Championships, Peter Schaltz, South for Denmark, ended in four hearts on the auction shown.

After the lead of the diamond king, taken by dummy’s ace, declarer played a trump to the jack and ace. Norberto Bocchi cashed his diamond queen and continued with a third, letting Duboin ruff in with the heart queen to promote the setting trick in trumps via an uppercut.

In the other room, after the same opening, although North-South identified their heart fit, the Italians chose three no-trump as their final contract, played by North, Lorenzo Lauria.

East led the diamond 10, West played the queen and Lauria ducked. North won the diamond continuation and played a heart to the jack and ace. He won the third diamond and led another heart, allowing East’s queen to hold. As East had no diamond to return, Lauria ended with 10 tricks. The critical moment in the defense was that on the third diamond, East had to discard his heart queen, and that would have left declarer without resource.

Curiously, if West ducks the first diamond (normally sound technique in these positions), Lauria can always make the hand. He wins cheaply, leads a heart up, and East cannot unblock his queen — or West later gets endplayed in diamonds to concede a second heart trick. And if East plays low on the first heart, declarer puts in the jack, wins the second diamond, and ducks a heart to East’s bare queen, as happened at the table.

Against your four spades, reached after North's cuebid of two diamonds, which was artificial and said nothing about diamonds (it merely showed a high-card limit raise in spades.) West leads a diamond to his partner's jack. At trick two East returns the heart king. Plan the play.

This may look like a standard elimination-type hand (in which you eliminate hearts and try to duck a club to East to give you a trick in either hearts or clubs).

However, with such small club spots in both your two hands, that line is unlikely to work.

Instead, look at your diamonds. That is the suit where the good spot cards will come into play. Since the bidding and play thus far tell you that East must surely have the diamond ace, you can take ruffing finesses through him to establish discards for yourself.

Win the heart ace, play the trump ace and a trump to dummy, and advance the diamond king, ruffing out East’s ace. At this point you can lead another spade to dummy and pass the diamond 10, discarding a club.

West can win with his queen and shift to a club, but you win the club switch with the ace and cash the diamond eight, discarding your last club loser. You then give up a heart, and ruff the last heart in dummy. You end up losing two diamonds and one heart, but no clubs.

One of the pairs fighting for the top honors at the 1998 Cavendish was Bart Bramley, playing with Sidney Lazard. Sidney is one of an elite group of players who represented the U.S. in world championship play in the 1950s. By my count we are now down to a handful of such players, including Ivar Stakgold and Billy Rosen. Bart is a representative of the next generation who has now started a partnership with another of my regular teammates, Lew Stansby.

Bart drew an interesting inference to bring home this delicate four-diamond contract.

On the spade-king lead and continuation, Bramley put up the spade jack to force the queen and to confirm the location of the spade honors. He ruffed, drew two rounds of trumps, then led a club to the king. Now came a third diamond to dummy, and a second club.

East, Michael Cornell, took the ace and played a third club. Bramley won and paused to count up the hand. Since East clearly had both round aces to justify his cue-bid and had also shown up with the spade queen, he was less likely to have the heart jack than his partner — the point being that he might have opened the bidding with that hand, playing a weak no-trump that started at 11 high-card points. So Bart advanced the heart 10, and whether Lionel Wright covered that card or not, Bramley had his 10th trick.

South correctly opened one spade here, because with five losers he thought he would need two cover cards or some trump support to make game. Things turned out well when his partner was able to give a limit raise in spades. After cue-bidding and checking for key cards, he found himself in six spades on the lead of the heart jack. Put yourself in his shoes:. How do you plan to make 12 tricks? Whom do you want to play for the diamond ace?

After winning the heart lead, you should draw trump with the ace and queen, then lead the diamond seven toward the dummy. When West holds the diamond ace, as here, he is caught on the horns of a dilemma, also known as a “Morton’s Fork.” If he takes his diamond ace, the eventual discard on the diamond king will take care of the club queen.

West’s choice of playing low is no better. After the diamond king wins, you will throw a diamond from dummy on the third round of hearts. When you exit with the diamond queen to West’s ace, he is endplayed. A red-suit return will allow you to ruff in dummy and throw the club queen from hand, while a club back will guarantee two tricks in the suit.

This same position does not arise if you play East for the diamond ace; if he had that card, he could duck the first round of diamonds, then win his ace and lead a club through the ace-queen.