Despite the combined North-South high-card strength, three no-trump is a poor contract. But it is hard to stay out of, since North should not try to land on a pinhead by passing two no-trump. So imagine that South declares today's deal in three no-trump, against which West leads the spade seven.

With one defender holding an established suit, declarer can only run seven tricks before giving up the lead, so two more tricks must be generated from the hearts. Moreover, these extra tricks obviously will have to come from that suit without letting West obtain the lead.

South therefore must assume that East holds the heart ace and no more spades. To trick two, a heart is led, and if West plays the seven, dummy ducks! East must win the trick and now declarer regains the lead and plays a heart to the jack, achieving his goal.

Note: If West produces the heart 10 or queen on the first round, dummy covers cheaply. At the next opportunity declarer plays a second heart and ducks West’s seven. This line risks an extra undertrick, but is the only way to come close to making the contract.

Curiously, there IS a defense to three no-trump, but not one that any mortal would find. West cashes a top spade and leads a second, letting East discard the heart eight. Now West can follow with a high heart when the suit is first led and can no longer be kept off lead.

Declaring four hearts, South can count eight top tricks, and hopes that the other two will come from ruffing two spades in dummy. But if West has the diamond ace, South might score the diamond king and need only one ruff in dummy.

It looks like normal technique for declarer to duck the first club, then take the club jack with the ace and lead the diamond 10 to the jack, king and ace. East now has a choice of defenses. If he plays a club, then West will win the trick and exit with a top spade. Now if declarer wins and tries to ruff a spade in dummy without drawing any trump, East will be able to overruff dummy and the contract goes down a trick.

But it costs South nothing to play the heart ace and king before ruffing a spade. As the cards lie, this means that East has no trumps left to overruff dummy, so declarer ruffs a diamond back to hand before ruffing his last spade on the table. He makes two spades, two spade ruffs, five trumps and the club ace.

Declarer can (and probably should) play precisely one round of trumps at trick three before leading a diamond to the king. But it is also worth noting that if declarer erroneously draws two rounds of trumps before playing on diamonds, then West can win the third club and play a third trump, killing the second ruff in dummy.

I am always happy to receive full-deal problems from my readers. Ray Dufour posed today's declarer-play problem. He asked how to play three no-trump on the lead of the heart five, and how declarer's strategy would vary, depending on what happened in the early tricks.

The first issue is what to play from dummy at trick one. It looks right to put up the queen — if you don’t, you cannot get any use out of that card. Let’s say the queen loses to the ace and the heart three comes back. Now it looks likely that hearts were 4-4, so you win the heart king (for fear of a spade shift) and run the club 10. If West puts up the queen, duck it. If East had returned a high heart spot (so that the suit appeared to be 5-3), duck the second heart, win the third, and try to sneak the club 10 past West — hoping he will forget to cover if he began with queen-third of clubs. If he covers, you will need the clubs to split 2-2.

Things are rather more complicated if the heart queen holds the first trick. Your possession of the heart four and two means that you can assume that if the heart three is played by East, then hearts are 4-4. So lead a low club from dummy. If you judge from East’s play to the first trick that hearts are 5-3, then play clubs from the top and hope the suit breaks.

Declaring six no-trump, South appreciated that he needed four diamond tricks for his slam to succeed, but he failed to apply the right safety play.

Against the slam West kicked off with the club jack, and South could count only 10 top tricks, but with the diamond suit likely to produce the requisite extra two. On winning the club lead in hand perforce, declarer continued with the diamond ace and was brought up short when West showed out — the slam went down the drain.

As South bewailed his bad luck, North poured gasoline on the fire by asking South if he held the diamond eight. When South admitted to that card, North replied that the contract was cold.

South was still mystified, so North went on to explain that declarer’s only problem would come if East held all four missing diamonds. The right line was to enter dummy and lead a low diamond toward the South hand, covering whichever card East elected to play. If East played the three, declarer would insert the eight. Should East play the nine, South would cover. If West showed out, South could now lead back toward the jack. East would win, but declarer would capture the return, re-enter dummy, and finesse against the 10.

If it is East who shows out on the first round, declarer could rise with the king and continue by leading toward the jack, simply surrendering one trick to the queen.

When today's deal came up at the table West led a top spade and East discouraged, hoping his partner would find the diamond shift. Instead West (who knew his side's spades were solid enough) continued with the spade jack and a third spade. Declarer ruffed and drew trumps, claiming 10 tricks.

When East asked his partner if he had considered shifting, West produced the reasonable response that he had interpreted his partner’s low spade at the first trick as count, suggesting an original holding of ace-third. As West said, he was worried that if he didn’t cash out the spades, one might go on the minors — and East could not overtake at the first trick in case the lead was from K-Q-x.

As a matter of fact, one of the defenders was grievously at fault here –and it was not West. When West leads the spade king, East should be able to work out where the defensive tricks are going to come from — but West cannot see through the backs of the cards. So it is up to East to plan the defense for his partner. He must overtake the opening lead with the ace and return a diamond.

The plan is for East to win the first trump with the ace, cross to his partner in spades, and receive a diamond ruff in return. West will know not to try to cash a third spade, since East’s defense has made it clear there is a ruff coming.

Today's deal is a constructed hand. Although the details of the deal's genesis are lost in the mists of antiquity, it is believed that it comes from a par-deal contest dating from at least 80 years ago, in which pre-composed deals were set to challenge competitors' ingenuity.

If you hadn’t seen it before, and just looked at the North-South cards, you would assume that it was extremely easy to make the grand slam on a heart lead. However, you are given fair warning that if you run any unnecessary risk, you are doomed.

The best line to bring home your contract requires you to protect against as many bad breaks as possible in all four of the suits — I will give you the tip that if East is ruffing the opening lead, you are in very poor shape!

The secret is to plan to jettison your club honors — and once you decide this is necessary, you can only make that play on winners from dummy. To void yourself of trump, you win the first heart and ruff a heart high, West discarding his club. You lead a low trump to dummy and ruff another low heart high, then draw all the trumps, discarding one top club honor on the fourth trump.

The remaining high heart from dummy takes care of your other high club, and now dummy’s five club winners can be taken without interference.

At pairs the target is to take as many tricks as possible when you are in a normal contract, and to insure your contract only if you know doing so will score well. At all other forms of scoring, try to insure the contract at all costs.

In today’s deal when North opened a weak two hearts, South would find that his partner held a decent suit (by using the Ogust relay, as here, or Keycard Blackwood) and should then play six no-trump to protect his vulnerable diamond holding. Well bid, but most players would play to take 13 tricks in six no-trump, without realizing that there might be a better approach — albeit one that might lead to their taking fewer tricks.

When West leads a low spade, declarer should win the queen and run the clubs, throwing spades and the diamond four from table. On these tricks West throws two spades and a diamond. What next?

Best is to cash the spade king, discarding a heart from table. You have reduced to a six-card ending, dummy having five hearts and one diamond, West four hearts and the diamond ace-queen. When you lead the spade ace and West throws the diamond queen, make sure to discard a heart from the board, giving up the overtrick to improve your chances of making the slam. Now, after the heart ace and king reveal the bad break, throw West in with his diamond ace to lead into dummy’s heart tenace.

One of the most dangerous emotions for a bridge player is that of premature euphoria. It is easy to be on your guard when you can see traps set all around you, but it is more difficult to remain alert when the road seems very clear.

Declarer succeeded in bringing home four spades today after West led the heart queen. He won the trick in dummy and played the spade king, which East took, then cashed his heart winner before exiting with a second trump. At this point declarer could have been forgiven for relying on the diamond finesse, which succeeds if either minor-suit honor is well-placed, or if diamonds split. As the cards lie, this line would be doomed to failure.

South, however, saw a little further into the hand. He cashed the diamond ace first, then came back to hand with a trump and led a diamond to dummy’s queen. East could take his king, but was endplayed. When he returned a heart, it allowed declarer to ruff in dummy and discard his club loser.

The point of the hand is that if the diamond finesse succeeds, you do not need to take it at once. You have enough entries to lead up to the queen-jack twice later on and get a discard for your potential club loser. Had the diamond queen held, declarer would have led a club to the ace and another diamond toward the jack. He could always fall back on the club finesse eventually if nothing else worked.

Today's deal was sent to me by Cees Tammens from the White House Junior tournament in Amsterdam earlier this year. I am always happy to see junior bridge promoted, and this event sees top teams from all round the world coming together, in one of the few events devoted to the younger generation.

Norwegian Kristoffer Hegge came up with a neat play here, in his contract of four spades. After the sort of pre-empt that one tends to associate with juniors, West led his singleton diamond to the two, nine, and South’s ace.

Hegge cashed the spade king, followed by the spade jack to dummy’s ace, collecting all the trumps. Then he came off dummy with a small club, and East hopped up with the king to shift to a heart. Declarer took the heart ace, crossed to dummy with the spade nine, and played the club 10, on which he discarded his diamond five, letting West win his queen.

Now West was endplayed forced either to lead a heart and give up his trick in that suit, or to concede a ruff and sluff. Without the information of the diamond bid from East, declarer at the other table followed the more natural line of playing a diamond to the queen, losing two diamonds, a heart and a club for down one.

Incidentally, it would not have helped East to duck his club king. After stripping off the clubs, declarer would eventually have played three rounds of hearts to endplay West.