In the following deal, while South's breaking the transfer with the leap to four spades may have been a marginal action, the final slam contract is superb. How would you play it when West leads the club jack?

The best plan is to win the club ace and draw trump in three rounds. After crossing to the club king, eliminating that suit, try a heart to East’s six and your queen. The only dangerous situation is when the full deal is as shown today.

If West trusts his partner’s echo to be based on a doubleton heart (and since he knows his partner has a Yarborough, he ought to get this right) he may well be able to work out that if he wins his heart king, he will be endplayed. A red-suit return would concede an extra trick, either to the heart nine or to South’s diamond jack. A club return would give declarer a ruff-and-discard for the losing diamond.

Suppose therefore West smoothly plays low, allowing South’s heart queen to win. If you have not considered this situation, pause to think how you would continue from this point. It is no good crossing to the diamond king and playing a heart to the jack. West will win and exit safely with the heart 10, killing the heart discard.

Remarkably, the winning continuation is to cross to the diamond king and run the heart nine when East follows low! Here, West can win with the 10 but now he is truly endplayed.

At the Dyspeptics Club the players are not given to introspection. Thus it was remarkable that after South had made his game, he reconsidered his play and admitted that he had missed the best line.

Against five diamonds doubled, West led the heart eight, won with dummy’s ace. South cashed the spade ace and led a second spade, East ruffing in with the diamond 10 and South overruffing. Declarer ruffed his heart loser with dummy’s solitary trump and now had the problem of returning to his hand to draw trump.

Worried that East would ruff in again, promoting a trump trick for West. South decided to play a club instead. East tried to cash two rounds of the suit, relying on his partner for a trump trick. So South made his doubled game.

South was not slow to comment that perhaps East might have played a low club after winning his king, putting his partner in with the queen for another spade play to generate the trump promotion. However, there was no need for declarer to give the opponents this opportunity. Do you see what he had missed?

South was right to worry about the trump promotion but found the wrong solution. He should simply have played a spade anyway, and when East ruffs in, then South discards a club. Even if East is able to put his partner in for a further spade play, there are only two trumps out and declarer has the ace and king, so no further trump promotion is possible.

While the world junior championships were being played in Bali nearly 20 years ago, a tournament to celebrate Indonesia(s 50th anniversary was being run simultaneously. This problem came up for the British team — and was not solved at the table. Because they failed to qualify for the final stages by the smallest of margins, it was an expensive slip.

South handled his very powerful hand sensibly enough in the auction, although North might have reasoned that the club king was not likely to be pulling its full weight. The final contract of four spades looks next to impossible, even on the lead of the diamond ace.

However, after a lot of thought, West switched to the club ace, then played the heart nine, which went to East’s queen and declarer’s ace. What next? The line chosen at the table was to draw four rounds of trump and try the heart 10, but East ducked that, and declarer had no chance now.

Can you spot the winning line? It is not so bizarre; West’s auction and opening lead suggest he has seven clubs and the bare diamond ace. You need to win the first heart and play West to be 4-1-1-7. You can test the theory by playing three top trumps, then throw West in by leading your low trump, forcing him to play a club for you. Now you have an entry to dummy to take the diamond finesse, and eventually a second parking place for your losing hearts.

In today's auction North cue-bids at his first turn to show a limit raise in hearts, and South has enough to jump to game, despite some concerns about his kings being badly placed because of the overcall.

On the lead of the spade queen, South will have to play carefully to make. Of course, he could succeed by playing East for the trump queen, but there is a far better line. South wins the spade king and ace and ruffs the spade loser in hand. Then he leads the club queen to knock out the club ace; West is forced to win and can only exit with another club. South wins the club jack, cashes the heart ace, and then takes the club king. (On a bad day West might ruff the third club, but if he did, declarer could reasonably hope he would have no more trumps left and thus be compelled to lead away from the diamond ace or to provide a ruff-sluff by playing spades.)

As it is, when the club king lives, the key play follows. South leads a second trump from dummy and, when East follows with a low heart, finesses the jack. If the finesse wins, South is safe; he must give up two diamonds but has 10 tricks. If the finesse loses, West will be out of hearts and must open up the diamonds or give South a ruff and discard. Either way, South is home free.

There are few bridge players whose names have entered into common parlance — perhaps Stayman and Blackwood are two that have achieved immortality. Another possible candidate, at least in the expert community, is Alphonse Moyse, whose championing of the 4-3 trump fit meant that this holding is often referred to as a Moysian fit.

Moyse, whose heyday as a player was in the 1950s and who was a long-time editor of the Bridge World magazine, was credited with playing this grand slam, in which the auction is a throw-back to earlier and simpler times.

The two-heart opening was strong, and the three-diamond bid was a free bid promising extra values. Four no-trump was Culbertson, promising three aces, and the seven-heart call was not unreasonable, in the hope that North had six diamonds.

West led a trump against the grand slam, and Moyse could have settled for the club finesse, but the auction had suggested that West had most of the outstanding cards. Accordingly Moyse played five rounds of trump, discarding the club queen from dummy. Then came the spade ace followed by the run of the diamonds.

As Moyse placed West with the club king, there was no escape for the defenders. The spade queen in dummy forced West to keep his king, and thus to bare his club king. At trick 12 Moyse played a club to the ace, taking the last two tricks and bringing home the grand slam.

The small slam in spades was a fair bet on this deal, but the trump break seemed to make South's task impossible. Never a player to give up lightly, declarer set West a problem that he failed to solve.

West led the club jack and, after winning, declarer played off the two top trumps to reveal the loser in the suit. With no clear idea in mind, he led a third trump and noted that West (who had already thrown a club) brooded for a little before discarding the diamond two. After winning with his trump queen, East pushed through the heart nine.

At this point South could have settled for one off, but risking a larger loss, he won with the heart ace and played off his remaining trumps. On the first of these, West threw the heart queen, but on the last, something vital had to go. In the vain hope that his partner held 10-third in diamonds, West let a second diamond go and suddenly South had four tricks in the suit.

It was true that West was squeezed, but he knew that declarer now had only 10 top tricks. A club discard looks illogical since it would give South an 11th trick immediately. However, West would now be discarding after declarer (who would have to use the diamond king to reach the clubs), and there would be no additional pressure on the defenders, with East’s heart eight now controlling that suit if necessary.

Most Souths reached three no-trump in this deal, but many missed a simple point in the play, there being a right and a wrong way to maximize the possibilities in hearts.

West led the diamond queen against the no-trump game, and you realize that playing on clubs would be too slow because the defense would almost always come to three tricks in the suit, plus at least two diamonds.

Therefore, you have to go after hearts, and since you have six top winners in spades and diamonds, you need three heart tricks for the contract. The simple finesse of the jack works half the time, but if it fails, you will be doomed in the absence of an unlikely squeeze. Contrast leading a heart to the nine — also a 50 percent chance, since East will hold the 10 half the time. If it loses, one defender or the other will have started with queen-third a third of the time. The combination of the chances gives you a two-thirds chance of success.

One more trap: You cannot afford to duck the opening diamond lead because if the heart finesse fails, there may be five tricks immediately available to the defense via three clubs and one trick in each red suit. So win the opening lead with the diamond king in dummy and finesse the heart nine. The finesse loses to the 10, but with East holding queen-third of hearts, there will be nine tricks for the taking when you regain the lead.

A decade ago, Michael Rosenberg, considered to be one of the game’s greatest technicians, wrote an extremely interesting bridge autobiography called “Bridge, Zia … and Me.” It’s a fascinating trawl through his bridge life, and his partnership with the charismatic Zia Mahmood.

The hands are fascinating (but are not for the beginner) and his novel outlook gives food for thought. Michael is known as one of the finest card players in the world as well as one of the slowest, and you can guarantee that he will never fail to solve a problem because he has not pondered it long enough.

He claims that today’s deal is his favorite in his book. You are in six hearts, and your only chance of making it appears to be if East holds the spade king either singleton or doubleton. Yet even though West holds the critical card, you should still make the contract!

West cashes a top diamond and plays another, which you ruff. Now play the rest of your hearts, discarding two small spades from dummy. Then come the three clubs, ending in dummy. In the three-card ending, you have reduced to queen-third of spades in dummy facing ace-jack-third in your hand. If East has not discarded a spade, you finesse. But he does. Now consider that no-one would discard from king-third of spades in this position. Therefore, he must have started with four. If they include the king, you are sunk; so you take your only chance and play to the ace.

The most recent phenomenon in bridge both in America and all around the world is the growing popularity of the senior tournament, limited to those 55 and over.

Al Levy, a New York player and organizer, reached an aggressive no-trump game in this deal from a senior knockout teams after West had opened one club, playing a strong notrump and five-card majors.

Levy, who was favored with the lead of the heart queen, resisted the temptation to win in hand, take the heart finesse, and rely on the diamonds splitting. (He would always have time for that later on.) Instead, he took the heart ace and ducked a club. East won cheaply and played a second heart. Now Levy ducked a second club. West pressed on with establishing his hearts by leading a third round, and Levy won in dummy and paused for a reassessment. West’s failure to lead a club, coupled with the play in that suit so far, persuaded him that the suit was splitting, so he discarded a diamond on the heart, overtook the diamond king, and gave up a club. When the spade finesse succeeded, he had nine tricks: three hearts, and two tricks in each of the side-suits.

Did you note that the defense had one chance left in the ending? West could have cut communications by leading a spade; but it had to be an honor. Leading a low spade would allow declarer to run the trick to his hand and come home eventually.