In 1974, BOLS Royal Distilleries, a Dutch company, first sponsored a competition in which the world's best players were asked to write articles promoting their favorite bridge tips. Inevitably, the first crop of tips was the best, and one of the best of those was called "The Intrafinesse," submitted by the Brazilian superstar, Gabriel Chagas.

Today’s deal is an extremely challenging example of the theme. North-South had done well to avoid four spades, which would have had to go down when East turns up with the heart jack, and there is a virtually inevitable diamond loser.

Against three no-trump West found the best lead of a club. In practice declarer broached diamonds by running dummy’s queen (hoping for West to have a singleton honor or two honors doubleton), but still could manage only two diamond tricks, bringing his total to eight.

Declarer could have succeeded if he had relied on an intrafinesse, which involves first finessing against a significant missing card, then pinning it on the next round. He should start with a diamond to dummy’s six, which would have lost to East’s eight. On the next round of the suit declarer leads dummy’s diamond queen covered by the king and ace, and West’s 10 falls. Now declarer’s J-7 are poised over East’s 9-2, Declarer cashes his spades ending in dummy, then plays a diamond to his seven, thus making the three diamond tricks he needed for his contract. This line works against a doubleton eight, nine or 10 in West.

Today's problem comes from a relatively new bridge book, Patrick Jourdain's "Problem Corner," published by Master Point Press, and is typical of the author's challenging but fair tests of your skill. The author was for many years the editor of the International Bridge Press Association, the bridge journalist's bible, since it publishes news and hands from all around the world. Bridge magazines are becoming thinner and thinner these days, but you can read a selection of scintillating deals here.

If you want to set yourself a realistic test, consider how South should play four hearts here, but first cover up the East and West cards. West, who has overcalled one spade, cashes the club ace at trick one and then switches to a low diamond. What are the dangers, and how can you short-circuit them?

The danger is that West has led a singleton club ace and is planning to win the first trump and put his partner on lead with a second diamond in order to obtain his club ruff.

The only entry to the East hand rates to be in diamonds. How can you prevent him from coming on lead? The secret is that you should win the diamond lead at once and play the spade king, discarding a diamond from hand when East is unable to cover. This elegant maneuver, aptly named the Scissors Coup, cuts the defenders’ communications.

In today's deal your best slam is six diamonds, but at matchpoints it is frequently hard to locate minor suits. In six no-trump you receive the lead of the heart queen. It is worthwhile giving the right approach a fair amount of consideration; the answer might well surprise you.

Let’s look at three approaches. The fair-weather player cashes the club ace and king and tries to run the club suit for four tricks. If that line succeeds, he moves on to the next deal, oblivious to his own failings.

The more cautious player notes that if West has a singleton honor, he can cash a top card from dummy, then lead a low club toward his 10 to hold his losers in the suit to one. Nice try, but when you win the first heart with the ace and cross to a club to lead up to your hand, East would win his honor and return a heart, removing dummy’s entry to the clubs while the suit is blocked.

In summary, after the heart lead, if either defender has a singleton club honor, there is nothing that you can do, assuming best defense.

But there are precisely two singletons you can cope with — the bare club eight or nine in East. Win the heart lead and immediately advance the club 10, planning to run it if West plays low. If he covers, win and lead back to your seven, insuring four club tricks for your side.

North-South have a great fit here, together with a lot of controls, and it is easy to imagine that they might get bid to at least the five-level. Today, though, the secret is to stop at the four-level, then to play the hand carefully to come home with even 10 tricks.

A reasonable approach in four hearts is to win the club lead and take a diamond finesse. If the defenders play a second club, then declarer will ruff, draw trump, and play the diamond ace and another diamond. When that suit fails to break, he will ruff the fourth diamond in dummy and try to play spades for one loser. If that fails, declarer will go down and will doubtless consider himself unlucky.

However, it is possible to do much better than that. In fact, on careful play the contract is 100 percent guaranteed. After the club lead, declarer must win and ruff the club five in his hand. He now makes sure of 10 tricks by drawing trump in as many rounds as required, then playing the diamond ace and another diamond. When a defender wins that, he cannot play another diamond or it will set up a trick for declarer in that suit, nor can East shift to spades effectively. If declarer ducks the trick, West can win, but will be confronted with the same dilemma, since a ruff-sluff lets declarer ruff in hand and pitch a spade loser.

Instant gratification is all very well, but at the bridge table you will generally find that "Make haste slowly" is a far better approach. I have often found that a suit splitting 3-3 at the start of a deal rates to split no worse than 3-3 at the end of it. Conversely, when you delay playing on a suit, you often find out far more about the opponents' hands — and opponents occasionally discard from a critical holding before they become aware of declarer's distribution.

Let’s look at today’s contract of six no-trump. The novice will play on clubs immediately, and depending on whether he guesses the suit accurately or not, he will end up with either 11 or 12 tricks. But there is no need for making a blind guess.

When the spade jack is led against six no-trump, declarer should win the queen and lead a low heart from the board. East wins the heart king and returns a spade. After cashing the spade and diamond winners, declarer takes the heart ace, and discovers that West began with a singleton heart. , He also began with five spades and three diamonds. The count in each of these suits is absolutely guaranteed since one defender or the other has shown out on each of these suits.

At this point West is known to have four clubs, so declarer cashes the club king and queen and can then finesse with complete confidence against West’s jack.

When this deal came up in a knockout match at a recent regional tournament, both tables reached the spade game despite East's opening bid. North doubled the one-heart opening bid, and at one table heard a one-spade response and simply jumped to game, while in the other room North followed the sequence shown here.

By agreement the jump to three hearts showed precisely four trumps and forcing values, and was designed to insure that North-South did not reach a 4-3 fit if South had been obliged to respond in a three-card suit.

In the first room South won the heart lead and went after trumps by leading them from the top. The 4-1 trump break left declarer with just nine tricks. Playing on clubs before trumps would have probably led to defeat as well, so South considered that he had simply been unlucky, but the declarer in the other room demonstrated that there was more to the deal than that.

Here South realized that he could afford two trump losers but not three. As he knew East would surely have the spade ace, he found the best play of a low spade from dummy at trick two. When the ace popped up, declarer had achieved his goal of holding his trump losers to two. But had the defenders won the first trump trick cheaply, declarer would have regained the lead and led out a top trump. This would have been proof against almost any lie of the cards.

Against three no-trump West led the spade queen. After holding off on the first round, declarer won the spade continuation. It was natural enough to play on clubs — a low card went to the king, which held, and declarer ducked the second round of the suit completely, hoping that West had started with the doubleton ace. No joy, for West won with the jack and cleared the spades.

One possibility now was to hope that the spades broke 4-4 and lead another club, However, South correctly decided to abandon the suit. Instead, he cashed the diamond king and finessed the 10. East won and exited passively with another diamond. Declarer cashed dummy’s two diamond winners, throwing two clubs from hand, and watched West’s discard with interest. That player parted with the heart three on the last diamond and kept his winning spades and club ace.

Now South came to hand with the heart ace and led another heart. When West showed out, it was easy to play low from the table and leave East on lead, compelling him to lead a heart into dummy’s K-J.

Curiously, if West lets a winning spade go on the last diamond, declarer is helpless. He cannot throw East in with a heart without covering West’s nine with the jack; then East has two natural heart tricks. Had West found this play, declarer would have regretted his failure to play the club queen from hand at trick three, a far easier way to knock out West’s sure club entry.

Today's deal is in response to a reader's letter about defensive signals other than attitude. As usual, there is not necessarily a single best way to pass on a message to your partner — in fact this article will suggest two entirely separate methods of signaling, and all you have to do is to establish with your partner which way you prefer.

You are defending four spades after partner has led the club five. Dummy’s ace wins and declarer plays ace and another spade. What do you lead after winning your spade king?

Let’s spell out what the two options are for signaling in trumps. The first, and somewhat more common one, is to play that a high-low signal in trumps suggests a desire to ruff. Therefore, if partner followed with the five then three of trumps, he must have a singleton club, and you should play a second club for him to ruff. Partner will score his heart ace, and later on, your club queen will be the setting trick.

The alternative and slightly more flexible approach is to use your play in trumps as suit preference, thus playing up the line asks for the low suit, while echoing in trump asks for the higher suit. If using this method, West will play the three, then four, of trump, and East will again give him the ruff.

Suit-preference gives you slightly more options because you can sometimes send a message for all three of the outstanding suits, while echoing for a ruff is a binary signal.