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.

Against three no-trump West naturally leads his fourth-highest club. South must win the first trick, of course. But how should he advance from there?

It looks as if you have nine top winners, but there is many a chance for a slip-up. True, there are indeed nine winners if diamonds split, and you do have a 90 percent chance of finding diamonds breaking 3-1 or 2-2. But just because the suit rates to behave, there is no reason for it to do so. If East has all four diamonds, you are in deep trouble. But what if it is West who has four diamonds?

You cannot afford to do anything but lead to a top diamond at trick two — if you make any other play in the suit, you risk looking incredibly foolish if East wins the jack. But what you must do is to start to unblock the diamonds by leading the diamond eight or 10 from your hand, winning with a high honor in dummy.

If you discover that West has all four of the missing diamonds, you can still recover with the aid of two finesses, but only if you have cleared the eight or 10 out of the way on the first round. When East shows out, you can use your two aces as entries to take two finesses against West by leading your remaining high spot-card from hand and forcing a cover, then crossing back to your hand for a second finesse.

The North hand is just worth a splinter raise to four diamonds, which shows game-going values with heart support and a singleton diamond. Despite being low on high cards, the fifth trump and two aces just tilt the balance in favor of the aggressive position.

It looks logical for South to ask for aces, then bid five no-trump to check for specific kings. If he heard a six-club response, he could bid the grand slam with confidence; but as it is, the small slam is far from cold.

Still, what might look like a 50 percent slam (if the club finesse works) can become a far better contract with a little care. On an opening top diamond lead, instead of relying on the clubs behaving, try the following line to exploit the possibility that West has all the high diamonds. Win the diamond ace, cash the spade ace, and ruff a spade high. Next, cross to dummy with a high trump to ruff another spade, and ruff the low diamond in dummy. Finally ruff a spade high and lead the diamond nine.

When West produces the 10, you should not ruff the trick. Instead you discard a club from dummy on this trick, leaving West on lead, with a choice of giving you a ruff and discard, or leading a club into your ace-queen. Either way, he has to concede the contract. If East can win the diamond and play a club through, you will fall back on the club finesse.

Less than sparkling defense allowed declarer's game to roll home in today's deal.

When North heard his partner open one no-trump, he transferred into hearts, then rebid two no-trump. South was certainly accepting the game-try with his super-maximum – but in which strain? True, he held three-card heart support, but his hearts could not have been weaker. Accordingly, he elected to bid the no-trump game.

West led the spade three to the 10, four and a deceptive queen from declarer, who led a diamond to the 10 and continued with the heart queen. West took his king and confidently played a second round of spades. Dummy’s jack held, and declarer drove out the heart ace for 10 tricks.

Where did the defense go wrong? When East did not have the wherewithal to cover dummy’s card at trick one, he should have followed with the nine — top of a doubleton to give count to his partner. West would read this as such and not as a “come-on” signal, since East could not beat dummy’s relatively insignificant spot-card. Knowing that his partner had at most two spades confirms that declarer must have at least three; therefore, a spade continuation could only help declarer.

After a club switch by West and a club continuation, declarer must duck two rounds. But now if East has remained on lead, a spade through declarer sets up a defensive trick in that suit before South can knock out West’s second heart honor. The defenders reach five tricks before declarer can take nine.