Bob Hamman was among the few to bid and make five diamonds in today's deal from last year's Olympiad in Lille.

You receive the lead of the heart seven, fourth highest or second from a bad suit, and if you had to play the hearts for no loser, the right play would be the nine. But here you may not need to make that desperate a move; finessing the queen leaves more tension in the ending, whether East covers or not.

East covers the queen with the king, reinforcing your opinion that the heart 10 is likely to be wrong. You advance a high diamond and are delighted to see the diamond jack falling from East, giving you an extra entry to dummy. Better still, the defenders play back a club instead of a major. Time to take advantage of their generosity!

You win the club, lead to the diamond nine to ruff a club, then cross over to the heart jack, eschewing the finesse. When you ruff out the third club and exit with a heart, you endplay North to lead a black suit and take care of your spade loser.

Had the defenders continued with a heart at trick three, you would have needed to rise with the jack and bring East under pressure by running all the trumps.

On the even more challenging spade shift at trick three, you would have had to rise with the ace to squeeze East — not easy, but maybe the indicated line?

At last year's Olympiad tournament in Lille, Fredrik Nystrom demonstrated that he is not just an Olympic champion, but also an illusionist creating magic. But first, before looking at what happened, take Cezary Balicki's position as declarer to try to solve the problem.

You are in four hearts, neither of the opponents having interfered in the auction. You win West’s lead of the club six with the ace; East follows with the queen, indicating the jack, but not the king.

Your contract looks to be comfortable unless you lose three trump tricks. Since the easiest singleton to cope with is the queen with West, you play a trump to the king, but West wins with the ace and plays back the club four. You ruff away East’s jack and continue by playing the heart jack. You realize that you misguessed trumps when West follows suit and East wins the trick with the queen. East now cashes the diamond ace and returns the spade nine, which you win in dummy. Then what?

Balicki quite reasonably concluded that Nystrom had the singleton diamond ace. So instead of playing a diamond to try to get back to hand, he tried to cash the spade king and ruff a spade, hoping to reach his hand to pull the defenders’ last trump.

However, since Nystrom had his singleton in spades rather than diamonds, he could ruff the second spade and defeat the contract.

In the quarterfinal of the Olympiad from Lille last year, Italy met Poland, and this was the last board of the third segment. Put yourself in the position of Giorgio Duboin. Your partner, the effervescent Antonio Sementa, has forgotten that you are playing teams, not pairs, and has thus put you in seven no-trump rather than seven spades. The good news is that the opponents lead hearts. When you play the queen from dummy, East contributes the four. How do you continue?

You can see that seven spades would be easy to make with the heart king onside. But how to make seven no-trump? Finessing for the diamond king is at best a 50 percent chance. Is there a way to take 13 tricks when the diamond finesse does not work?

Duboin found the solution: a double squeeze. He cashed the spade queen, and both opponents followed. Now he cashed the heart ace – maybe the king would be doubleton. Then he led a spade to the ace and a diamond to his ace.

Now Duboin ran the spades to reduce to a three-card ending in which he had kept three clubs in hand. Dummy had a diamond, a heart and a club, and each defender had to retain a red king against the threat in dummy. This in turn meant that when the club ace and king were cashed, declarer’s club 10 would be good for the 13th trick.

Despite this, Poland went on to win the match by a single IMP.

West's opening lead against three no-trump was very much open to discussion. While some would lead a low club, others would insist on a heart, while others, including me, would recommend the spade nine. This would be especially clear when the opponents are limited, but even here, leading from a sequence is as likely to be right as anything else, and somewhat less likely to cost a trick.

Say you lead the spade nine; dummy’s king wins, partner playing the three. Declarer next passes the diamond queen successfully, then repeats the diamond finesse. Now he leads a heart to his queen. Have you decided whether you will win or duck? And are you going to press on with spades or shift?

Given partner’s discouraging spade spot, if you ARE going to shift to clubs — which seems right — then the right play is surely the jack. If partner has the A-10, any club works, while if partner has the A-9, you need to pin the 10 in declarer’s hand, and a low club shift won’t work.

When the board came up in the Olympiad last year in Lille, Eduardo Scanavino of Argentina played three no-trump on a spade lead to the jack, queen, and king. Scanavino now deceptively led a low heart from hand. Schermer did extremely well to see through his ruse and hop up with the heart king to fire the club jack through for down one.

In this deal from the Lille 2012 world championships, six diamonds generally came home when it was attempted, but one variation produced a particularly interesting problem for declarer.

Since the play is easy on any other lead (you are forced to run the heart lead to your queen), let’s say West leads a low club. What’s next?

It looks natural to go after trumps, and to protect against a 4-0 trump break, you need to lead toward the diamond king-queen rather than starting with the diamond jack. When East wins and shifts to a heart, you suddenly have a problem. Did you notice that a heart shift was going to jeopardize your entries? You might as well put up the heart queen now — more in hope than expectation. You won’t get any value out of your queen if you don’t.

When West covers, you take your heart ace and play a trump to the queen. Had trumps split 2-2, you would have been home free, but as it is, you need to unblock spades (don’t you?) before drawing the last trump. By cashing only two spades, all you can afford to take before drawing trumps, you will leave the suit temporarily blocked. But you do have a resource.

After drawing the last trump, you pitch your spade queen on the club king and have unscrambled the blockage. You now have two homes for your heart losers on the spade jack and spade 10.

In the World Championships held last summer in Lille, Patrick Jourdain of Wales reported on the match between the English Seniors (who at that point were undefeated, and had a clear lead in their group) when they met their closest follower, Israel.

At the other table Israel had reached three no-trump. On a diamond lead, given the risk that there might not be time to establish a heart trick (particularly if East could win the first heart to play a second diamond), declarer might well have been tempted into the double club-finesse. However, South chose to play on hearts instead, and with the diamonds 6-2, plus West having no entry, the game came home easily enough.

By contrast, at our featured table, where Gunnar Hallberg and John Holland faced David and Daniela Birman, a simple Stayman auction led to four hearts by South. David Birman led a trump, and Daniela won with the king and switched to the diamond five.

David Birman took the inference first that his partner held the two top trumps, and secondly that had South had a singleton diamond, it would have been right for her either to cash both top trumps before playing the diamond, or to win the first trump lead with the ace. So Birman ducked the diamond with an encouraging card. Now East won the next trump and led a second diamond to the ace and received her overruff to set the game.

Today's hand is from the semifinals of the Junior (Under 25) Championship at the 2010 World Bridge Series. Here, Israel faced USA-1, and although Israel went on to win the final, USA-1 showed considerable verve in the bidding, reaching six hearts in an auction that consisted of 13 calls, whereas Israel did not progress beyond game. I have provided a natural sequence to get to slam here.

Since East for Israel had doubled North’s five-spade response to Roman Key Card Blackwood, West led a spade. Jason Chiu, for USA-1, showed that he could handle the cards as well as he could bid them. He ducked the spade lead, and on winning with the queen, returned a trump.

Chiu proceeded to play out all his trumps, and on the last one West naturally came down to the guarded diamond king and three clubs, while dummy kept two spades and three clubs. East had to keep both his clubs to protect his partner from a club finesse on the second round of the suit, and since he had sole control of the spade suit, was thus forced down to only one diamond.

Now came a spade to the ace, forcing a diamond from West, who was obliged to keep three clubs because of the threat in dummy. That allowed Chiu to take the ace and king of clubs, then the diamond ace, with the diamond four winning trick 13.

Most of the rules in bridge have an underlying grain of sense to them. Equally, it is almost impossible to construct a rule where one cannot find an exception. A typical rule that is generally but not always right is the prohibition against giving a ruff-sluff. Today's deal shows when a defender can break that rule.

North-South had an optimistic but straightforward auction to slam, though North’s decision to set up a game-force with a relatively balanced hand persuaded South to overbid by using Blackwood, when perhaps cue-bidding would have kept the contract low. In general, the use of the Jacoby two-no-trump response should be restricted to hands better than a dead-minimum opening bid.

Declarer took the diamond king lead, drew trump, eliminated the spades, and exited with a diamond to leave West on play in the six-card ending. Before she led to the next trick, she paused to count out declarer’s distribution. South was marked with having started with 2-5-2-4 distribution, so a ruff-and-discard would not advance declarer’s cause — either the clubs were solid to start with, or there would still be a loser. Conversely, touching clubs might surrender the defenders’ trick in that suit if East had the club queen and declarer played for split honors. So West exited with the diamond 10, and declarer had to lose a club at the end.

At the Dyspeptics Club complaining about bad luck is something of an art-form.

Here South grumbled that he should have followed his instincts instead of wasting time getting a complete count of the hand when the diamond queen was with West, the short hand, instead of with East, the long hand. While he had a point, of sorts, he had missed a simple clue at the end that would have eliminated any guesswork.

Against four spades West led the heart king, continued with the ace, then played a third round to kill off dummy’s now established nine. East ruffed, South overruffed, and started on trumps. West won the second round and got off lead with his last trump, while his partner discarded two diamonds.

When South tested the clubs, he found they were 4-2. At this point it was clear that West had started with three spades, six hearts, two clubs and hence only two diamonds. Playing, as he thought, with the odds, declarer crossed to the diamond king and finessed the jack, only to lose to West’s now bare queen.

Either opponent could have held the missing queen, granted, but before testing the clubs, declarer should have played off his last trump, throwing a diamond from the table. Then, after running the club winners, in the three-card end position East has to keep his club jack, so must come down to only two diamonds. Now, irrespective of its whereabouts, the diamond queen must fall in two rounds.