Today's problem is all about defensive bidding and the opening lead. Here, I'd advocate that West jump to three hearts at his second turn — a pre-emptive rather than a limit raise, since with a strong hand you can cuebid instead of jumping.

When the opponents ignore you and bid to four spades, what should you lead?

Many regard the opening lead as the most difficult part of the game (because you have so little information with which to work). There seems to be no reason to lead anything other than the partnership suit, but if you lead a low heart and either declarer or dummy has a singleton, you may never get the lead again — and that might be crucial for the defense.

Quite frequently, when you are the weaker defensive hand, it can work well to lead an unsupported honor in your partnership’s bid and supported suit, thus giving you flexibility on your play to trick two.

If you do lead the heart king, partner should play the queen under it, a clear suit-preference signal for a diamond. Now three rounds of diamonds guarantees the defeat of the contract. Note that if you started with a low heart, all declarer needs to do is guess trump to make his game.

This tactic is NOT a good idea when declarer is playing in no-trump. All too often leading an unsupported honor allows declarer to capture a high card that would otherwise have been pulling its weight on defense.

This deal comes from Sally Brock’s “Leading Questions in Bridge.”

Bidding is all about exchanging information with partner, but in bridge all this information is also available to the opponents. So, a good bidder is selective, telling partner what he needs to know, but keeping quiet when the information is more likely to be of use to the opponents.

East’s double here was really foolish. If his partner couldn’t lead the fourth suit without the double, then it would probably not be right anyway. Look at what actually happened.

West’s natural choice of lead, with such a good holding in declarer’s first suit, might well have been a trump, but East’s double deflected him and instead he chose the diamond 10, which ran to declarer’s ace. Declarer played the heart queen, won by East, who switched to a trump rather than cash the diamond king and set up dummy’s queen. Declarer won the trump shift in dummy, played a heart to his jack, a spade to dummy, cashed the heart king while discarding a diamond, ruffed a heart, and ruffed a club.

Declarer now played the winning heart from dummy. East had to ruff this, and declarer discarded a club. East now played the club ace, and declarer found a very nice maneuver when he discarded a diamond from dummy rather than ruff and endplay himself. East now had no option but to play a diamond, which declarer ran to dummy’s queen. That let him crossruff the last two tricks.

Today's deal sees an interesting and quite difficult variation of a safety play; give it a few seconds' thought before starting the play!

In the contract of six hearts the opening diamond lead goes to the jack and ace. Declarer follows up with the heart ace and queen, drawing all the trump. At this point declarer has 11 tricks (two spades, six hearts, the diamond ace, a diamond ruff, and a sure club trick). East is marked with the club ace, and the best hope for a second club trick is to find the clubs 4-3.

However, an extra chance comes by ducking the first club altogether in case West has five or six clubs. Suppose East wins cheaply and plays the spade queen. Win the spade king and ruff a club low. When the ace falls, declarer has 12 tricks. But suppose, instead, that East had three or four clubs headed by the ace.

After the second club is ruffed, the diamond six is ruffed in dummy. Now the club king is played from North. East’s ace is ruffed out, and the heart king is the entry to the two club winners in dummy.

In other words, by ducking the first club and ruffing the second club before playing out the top honors, you make the contract whenever East has the club ace and fewer than five clubs, instead of relying on the clubs to break.

A brief but eventful auction ended with South in five hearts, against which West led the club king, ruffed in the dummy. Now a trump to the ace revealed the 3-0 break.

How would you continue to play the contract?

Suppose you ruff another club, cash dummy’s bare trump queen, and play a diamond. To make the contract on that line, you will eventually need to find West with the spade ace, so you can reach dummy with the spade king.

A far safer way to play the contract is to lead the diamond 10 at trick three.

Let’s say that West ducks the first round of diamonds and wins the second.

If the defenders play spades now, you will be able to draw trump, ending in the dummy, and enjoy the diamond suit.

West will probably force the dummy with a second round of clubs instead. You ruff with dummy’s penultimate trump, leaving the dummy with the bare queen and East still holding jack-10 of trump.

To neutralize East’s trump, you then lead winning diamonds from dummy. Whenever East ruffs in, you will overruff with the king and return to dummy with the trump queen, drawing East’s last trump. You can then play the remaining diamonds, throwing all of your spade losers, to claim an overtrick.

East could have taken his spade ace at the time West decided to force the dummy, but the contract would still have been impregnable.

Kit Woolsey reported that Fred Stewart found an amusing play in the following deal from the first final session of a recent Life Master Open Pairs.

But before we get to Fred, look at that West hand and plan the defense to four hearts.

It is highly unlikely that two rounds of diamonds will stand up. Since declarer’s clubs threaten to take care of his spade losers, it feels like you should take an active role in the defense and go after our tricks quickly.

If you think about it, surely the best way to beat four hearts has to be to put partner on lead to play spades through declarer’s presumed king —isn’t it? So our unnamed hero (or was it goat?) in the West seat led a low diamond. Imaginative and unlucky, you may say, but only if Stewart put up the diamond queen at the first trick — and he did! That was his 10th trick for a great score.

Of course the purists would point out that with hearts and clubs splitting, there were always 10 tricks except on the lead of the spade ace. Declarer could ruff out the clubs and end up in dummy after drawing trump in two rounds. He could have fallen back on the spades splitting if that line wasn’t going to work — but this was more fun, wasn’t it?

Debbie Rosenberg, who is married to top expert Michael, demonstrated here that the talent in that family is not limited to her husband. Debbie was also part of the U.S. squad that won the World Junior Teams in 1991 as well as having numerous major successes in the women's game. Here she is at work in a delicate contract of three hearts.

West led a club to East’s jack. It did not seem right to East to give up on the club tenace by continuing the suit (although that does defeat the hand), so East quite reasonably shifted to the spade nine. West took two rounds of spades and played a third spade. Rosenberg ruffed in dummy, and appeared to have five top losers. However, she realized that she had been given a chance, since the defense no longer had any communication in the club suit.

However, the winning path is by no means obvious. But, given that East appeared to have all the remaining clubs, West was marked with the balance of high cards to make up his opening bid. Therefore, Debby cashed the top hearts and led a low diamond to the 10 and queen. West hopefully led a spade, but Rosenberg could win her spade king since East was out of trump. She drew the last trump, finessed the diamond jack, and parked her club loser on the diamond ace to make nine tricks for an excellent result.

How would you have dealt with the club situation in this deal, which arose during the 2007 European Youth Teams Championships, held in Jesolo, Italy?

Defending against four spades, West led the heart four. South won with the bare king, cashed the spade ace and king, then got off play with a trump. Back on lead with the spade queen, West deviously returned the club queen, which was ducked all around. West continued with the club nine, and declarer, deciding that West’s initial club holding was Q-J-9, ducked again. East’s jack won, and the club return to the ace defeated the contract.

Great play by West, but should declarer have fallen for it? Probably not. Think back to the opening lead. If West had held both the heart queen and jack, the queen would surely have been the opening lead. The actual lead of the four suggests that it is away from one honor, not two. So, if West had held such an attractive sequence of club honors — the one South was playing him for — wouldn’t that have been the more obvious choice of attack?

At another table, also against four spades, West led a low diamond. Declarer inserted the jack — just in case — and East fell from grace and covered. South won, cashed his top trumps, then cashed his other top diamond, overtook the heart king with dummy’s ace, and discarded a club on the diamond 10. When later in the play declarer led a club to the king, that brought in 11 tricks.

In today's deal South played too fast and suffered the consequences. He didn't see the danger to his contract of four hearts when the defenders led and continued spades. He ruffed, and drew three rounds of trump, expecting them to break, or for East to have the long trump, in which case he would be in no danger.

When West turned up with four hearts, South could do nothing else but try to build the tricks he needed by knocking out the diamond ace. However, the damage had already been done. East won the diamond ace and returned a spade, leaving West with the 13th trump and two master spades ready to cash.

By contrast, compare the strategy of ducking the second trick, pitching a small club. You will then ruff the third spade, stripping East of that suit. Now you draw three rounds of trump to find the bad news, but can then simply draw the last trump and knock out the diamond ace.

The difference between this position and the former one is that East no longer has a spade to lead. So he must lead back a minor suit, and your hand is high.

While you would have gone down if West had five spades, the fourth trump and the diamond ace, there was nothing you could have done in that position. Accordingly, you might as well try to make your contract whenever it is possible.