Declaring six spades, you duck East's heart jack. He returns the heart king to your ace. Obviously East will have the spade king; if it is singleton or doubleton, making 12 tricks will be easy enough. What is your plan for overcoming the cases where he has three or four trumps to the king?

After winning the heart ace, cross to table with a club and run the trump eight. When that wins, lead the trump jack. East covers, and now you draw East’s last trump with the queen.

East’s most likely shapes in the minors are either 2-3 or 3-2. Thus West has to keep at least four cards in each minor. To exert some pressure on his minor-suit holdings, you cross to dummy in a minor suit, say clubs. When you ruff the heart six, what can West do?

You should assume that he will probably discard first from his five-card suit. If West discards a second club, you will cash the club king and ruff a club before returning to hand with a diamond ruff to cash the good club. If West discards a diamond, a diamond to the ace and a diamond ruff will establish a long diamond, and the club ruff is the entry to reach it.

Finally, if East had turned up with four trumps, you would need him to have begun with a 4-5-1-3 distribution. This would allow you to ruff a club in dummy and then squeeze West in the minors.

How do you plan to play this adventurous grand slam after West leads the club jack to your ace?

If both spades and trumps are going to break 3-2, it will be easy to make 13 tricks. The best plan is to draw two rounds of trumps, then cash the spade ace and king. When all follow to the spades, draw the last trump, cash the diamond ace and ruff a spade. After throwing your remaining club on a good diamond, your hand will be high.

This approach may even allow for a recovery when East has four spades and three trumps. For example, when West shows out on the second spade but is unable to ruff the spade king, the simplest plan is to ruff a spade, return to hand with the diamond ace and ruff another spade. Then you throw a club on the diamond king, ruff a club with the trump 10 and cash the trump queen. Your last two cards will be high spades.

What would happen if trumps broke 4-1? Then you would need East either to hold four hearts and three spades, or a singleton heart jack and two spades. In either eventuality, after cashing the diamond ace you would be able to ruff the spades good, throw a club on the diamond king, and if that held, draw trumps and claim the balance.

Just for the record, the likelihood of both majors splitting has only about a 50 percent probability.

The following example of a double throw-in is not especially complex, but the satisfaction that derives from being able to offer both opponents an unpalatable choice is a rich one.

If you had reached three no-trump after West’s weak-two opening bid, there would have been no story of course, since nine tricks are easy enough. But in four hearts on a spade lead, you win in hand and play a heart to the ace, then take two more rounds of trumps. West exits with another top spade, and you take it in dummy. What now?

Since West has nine cards in the majors, you are actually guaranteed to make your contract in very straightforward fashion. The solution is very simple; simply cash the ace-king in both minor suits.

When you cash the minor-suit winners, if West follows twice in both minors, you can take your choice of plain-suit cards to lead now — they all work. But if, as here, West turns up with a singleton club, you simply exit by leading a diamond (and vice versa).

If West is allowed to score his diamond jack, he can also cash a spade trick, but must then play another spade and allow your club loser to vanish. If East overtakes the diamond jack to cash a club, then he is left with only minor-suit cards to play, and the defenders never get their spade winner. Either way, one opponent is going to be left feeling very irritated!

It is not immediately clear what is the best slam for North-South to reach with today’s cards. The bidding has several points of interest since North has enough for a positive response to the two club opening but no convenient suit to bid. South might rebid three diamonds rather than two no-trump. Once he treats his hand as balanced, the highest-scoring small slam is reached.

The lead of the heart jack gets declarer off to a friendly start, but how should one play the hand — either at teams or matchpoints? Clearly if diamonds divide 3-2, South has 13 top tricks. He must, however, guard against a 4-1 diamond split, a break that occurs almost one time in four.

If South unblocks his clubs and leads to the diamond ace to cash the club ace, the 4-1 diamond split may defeat him. (The opponents may cash one club or more when they gain the lead with the fourth diamond.)

To overcome this difficulty, declarer must give up a diamond trick before he uses up his diamond-ace entry to dummy. He must, of course, cash his king and queen of clubs at tricks two and three before making the essential move of conceding a diamond trick.

This line of play guarantees the contract unless diamonds are 5-0. Declarer wins the return and uses the diamond ace as his entry to dummy to cash the club ace and discard his heart loser.

In today's deal North's three-diamond cue-bid showed a spade raise. Later, when South made a forcing pass of five clubs, North's five-diamond call showed the diamond ace and suggested slam interest. That was all South needed to take a shot at the spade slam.

On the top-club lead declarer realized he was short of intermediates in the diamond suit, but he appreciated the significance of the fact that West was a Scotsman. The diamond nine, traditionally known as the Curse of Scotland, would play a n important part in South’s plans.

South won the club lead in hand and drew trump in two rounds, ending in dummy, then ruffed a club, cashed the three top hearts, and ruffed a heart. He now had three diamonds and two trumps in each hand, with the lead in North.

Declarer called for a low diamond from dummy, and when East played low, he put in the diamond nine, endplaying West either to lead a diamond back around to South’s queen, or to give him a ruff and discard, whereupon the diamond loser would go away. It would have done East no good to hop up with his diamond 10 on the first round (though this is the best defense. (What if the diamond nine and eight were switched?). Had East gone up with the 10, South would have covered with the queen, and his possession of the diamond nine would have brought about an identical endplay on West.

I suspect many of my readers have never tried to make a contract on a squeeze — especially one where the count has not been rectified (an arcane way of saying that a trick still has to be lost after the squeeze has bitten). It is time to rectify that position.

In today’s deal South has done well to avoid making the weak spade suit trump, and instead has to play the hand in six clubs, against which West leads the heart queen.

With 11 top tricks, South should see no reason to delay drawing trumps. After this, he might feel a need to improve his chances of a potential squeeze by conceding an early spade trick. Clearly he must lose one spade trick whatever he does, and it is almost always easier to execute a squeeze if you need the rest of the tricks, rather than the rest but one.

However, closer analysis should reveal the futility of ducking a spade, since if given the lead, East or West can play another heart and thus remove the last entry to dummy. So, instead, after playing the two top spades to ascertain that the suit will not break, South plays off all his remaining trumps.

In the four-card ending, West is down to two spades and two hearts, as is dummy. But what does West pitch on the diamond ace? If a heart, dummy’s nine is good. If a spade, declarer pitches the heart nine from dummy and sets up the long spade.

Against your contract of four spades West leads the heart 10, East overtaking with the jack and continuing with the heart ace, which you ruff, as West follows with the six. How do you plan to insure your contract?

If spades and diamonds are both 3-2 you could make 12 tricks. However, as you are in four spades it will pay you to focus your attention to the possibility that either one or both of these suits could be 4-1.

After ruffing the second heart, you should play a diamond to the ace, followed by a trump to the king. Next you ruff a low diamond with the jack, setting up the suit against a possible 4-1 break. Even if a defender shows out on this trick, the diamonds are now established — but how do you get back to hand to run the suit?

The answer is relatively simple, when you think about it. You must overtake dummy’s bare trump queen with the ace to return to your hand and run the diamonds without forcing yourself. These plays have given the defenders at least one natural trump trick — indeed on today’s lie of the cards East has two trump tricks now. But in return you have retained control of the trump suit.

When you run the diamonds, East will ruff in and play a heart. However, you simply trump and continue the avalanche of diamonds. All you will lose is two spade tricks and one heart.

Transport yourself back in time, to play four spades, after an idiosyncratic auction, with 1954 Bermuda Bowl Champion Doug Steen in the East seat. West leads the club eight, which places East with the club ace and West with virtually all of the other high cards. You play low from dummy and Steen inserts the jack. Play on.

The original declarer drew trumps in three rounds and led a club to the king, which Steen allowed to win. When Steen took the third round of clubs he then carefully shifted to a diamond, allowing his partner to set up two winners in the suit. Declarer could not reach his hand except by overtaking the trump eight with the nine — and that would have exhausted his trumps. So he had to lose three tricks in the red suits; down one.

Did you spot declarer’s mistake? After drawing two rounds of trumps with the ace and queen, he should have thought back to the bidding. West appeared to have a doubleton club, as East did not try for a ruff, so West’s most likely shape was 2=5=4=2 (he would not leap to game on a 14 or 15 point 5332 shape). Thus, after the second round of trumps, declarer should have played on clubs. East could hold up the club ace until the third round, but the trump king would be the entry to the established clubs. On this approach, declarer would have made four trumps, a diamond, four clubs and a red-suit ruff.

In today's deal South drove to game by showing his two-suiter, then guessed to rebid four clubs rather than gamble out three no-trump, and was raised to five.

The defenders led two rounds of hearts, then East exited passively with a small diamond. Declarer won in hand cashed two top clubs, then crossed to the spade ace and took the club finesse and claimed the rest when diamonds behaved.

While East was telling his partner that there was nothing he could have done, West was wearily shaking his head in a successful effort to irritate East; can you see why?

There is a defense to five clubs, though it is hard to find. After winning two heart tricks, East can see that the main hope to defeat the contract is by winning a club trick. He should also realize that, given the chance, declarer will lead two rounds of clubs and find out East has the guarded club jack, then cross to dummy, and finesse the jack. To prevent this, East must shift to a spade at trick three and remove declarer’s side-entry to dummy before he finds out about the four-one club split. The bidding indicates the likelihood of South having solid diamonds (and shifting to a spade would not help declarer avoid a diamond loser if he has one).

Even if South were void in spades, and had 100 honors in trumps, it would take an iron nerve (or a peek) to finesse against the jack on the first round.