Today's deal reminds me of an expression my grandmother used to use: "He was so sharp, he cut himself."

The exact auction was different at the various tables, but East frequently opened three diamonds and South overcalled four spades. West leads the heart king and switches to the diamond eight. Plan the play.

You are not sure whether East has six diamonds or seven for his opening pre-empt at favorable vulnerability, so it looks dangerous to duck the diamond. The problem is that if you win and play a spade to the queen and another spade, West may win his ace and play a second diamond. Now a third round of diamonds may promote a trick for his presumed spade 10.

One declarer, alert to this danger, found a neat solution. At trick three he crossed to dummy’s club ace and played the heart queen, discarding his second diamond from hand. This play was designed to cut the communications between his opponents’ hands so they could no longer get the trump promotion.

Or could they? While declarer had neatly protected himself against an imaginary danger, he had created a new and fatal problem. The real layout was as shown in the diagram.

When West won the heart ace he continued with a second round of clubs. He then won the first round of trump with the ace and gave his partner a club ruff. One down!

Note that almost any other “normal” line of play would have succeeded.

In this deal from the Blue Ribbon semifinals, David Berkowitz found himself in a very ambitious three-no-trump contract. His Precision one-club opening bid was overcalled with a natural spade, which kept his side out of the spade contract that they were surely destined to find without intervention. Larry Cohen doubled to show 5-8 high-card points, then optimistically raised the one-no-trump rebid to game.

Even when you look at all four hands, it’s hard to see a way to more than seven tricks. West led a fourth-best spade, which Berkowitz won in dummy with the six. The club 10 was ducked around to the ace, setting up Berkowitz’s seventh trick. West persisted with spades, which Berkowitz won in dummy with the 10 to take a losing heart finesse. West got out with the heart jack, and now Berkowitz saw that he might be able to set up a heart for his eighth trick. And where there are eight…

He won the heart ace, played off the club king (to remove West’s exit card), cashed all the spades ending in dummy, and exited with a heart. West could take his good spade, but then had to lead a diamond away from his king. With the diamond queen scoring in hand, and the heart nine a winner in dummy, Berkowitz had his nine tricks — four spades, one club and two tricks in each red suit for plus 400 — almost all of the matchpoints.

After the teams medals were settled at the 1st World Mind Sports Games in 2008, there were further events to occupy the Juniors — a Pairs Championship and an Individual. This hand is from the Pairs, and not many pairs reached slam.

More often than not, if there is a choice of fit, contracts — especially high-level ones — play better when trumps split evenly. This hand is an exception: Six spades, a 5-4 fit, is the place to rest, not six hearts — the 4-4 fit.

After Radu Nistor and Bogdan Vulcan of Romania had landed neatly in their best contract, West led the diamond ace — nothing else is better. Nistor ruffed in hand, then played a low spade to the queen, whereupon the 4-0 break came to light.

With no possibility of 13 tricks, declarer needed to secure 12. There would be no problem if hearts broke 3-2, but, if possible, he had to guard against a 4-1 or 5-0 break. There were two straightforward chances — clubs might be breaking 3-3, or the hand with four or more hearts also held four or five clubs.

So, Nistor’s next step was to duck a club. Back came a diamond, which Nistor ruffed with the jack; then he drew the rest of the trumps by cashing the king, finessing the nine, and cashing the ace.

At this point he played dummy’s last spade, which squeezed East out of his heart or club guard, and so the slam came home.

I try to make the deals on Mondays slightly easier than the later deals within the week. But beware! Today's deal contains an unfriendly trap.

South declares four spades, West leads the diamond king and ace, and declarer ruffs. Declarer can almost always make the contract, as long as the trumps are no worse than 4-1. But he must begin by cashing the ace and king of trump! When the 4-1 spade break appears, he plays on clubs. West ducks the first club to try to disrupt declarer’s communications, then wins the second and plays another diamond.

Declarer ruffs and is now reduced to one trump in each hand, while West has two trumps left. Declarer now simply plays on hearts. (This line succeeds no matter which shape West started with — either two or three clubs.) The idea is that when West ruffs in and returns a diamond, as he must, declarer discards a club from table, ruffs in hand, and then uses his remaining clubs as substitute trumps. He runs the clubs, overruffing West whenever he ruffs in, and has the rest.

If it turned out that East had the four trumps, either declarer would be able to cash all of the side winners, or East would find himself in a situation like the one shown here.

Playing the trumps reflexively by cashing the spade ace, then the queen, sees declarer fail in this layout. West scores a second trump trick one way or another.

North-South would probably not want to get to six hearts, but several tables at the Cavendish teams in 2011 were unable to resist the temptation.

On the auction shown, South was fairly confident that he was going to buy a singleton club opposite, and right he was. Michael Seamon led a top club and continued the suit to tap the dummy. Declarer, faced with the choice of what he deemed to be an unlikely squeeze or a trump break, played off the top diamonds, then ruffed a diamond, went to the heart jack, and ruffed another diamond. The 3-1 heart split doomed him to down one.

The same fate beckoned John Kranyak and Gavin Wolpert; they also reached slam, and the defenders also led and continued clubs, but this line of defense persuaded Kranyak that hearts would not split.

Accordingly, he decided to follow a different approach. He ruffed the club, crossed to a heart, ruffed another club, came to the spade ace, and ran the hearts. His luck was in — the spade-diamond squeeze materialized when West had sole control of those two suits, and 12 tricks were duly recorded.

Nicely defended by an unlucky expert? Yes and no! In fact, after the top club lead, the defense must shift to a red-suit (either will do). Declarer can only bring in the diamonds by drawing three rounds of trump without taking a club ruff. Four diamonds, six hearts and the spade ace make only 11 tricks.

On today's deal from the Cavendish pairs North-South bid aggressively to reach a game in the face of their opponent's strong no-trump. Personally, as North I'd feel I needed a little more to invite game with a singleton in partner's likely second suit and only three small trumps, but it is hard to argue with results!

As a result of Michel Bessis’ aggression, Thomas Bessis played in four hearts, and John Mohan led the spade king — as would we all. When he continued with a second spade, he had given declarer all the help he needed. (In the identical position Darren Wolpert shifted to a club to doom the contract.)

On the spade continuation Bessis ruffed and advanced the diamond king. East, Huub Bertens, won and shifted to a low trump. Bessis won and passed the diamond 10 successfully, then ruffed a diamond, ruffed a spade, and cashed his remaining top trump, leaving East with a master trump, a losing diamond, and his clubs.

When declarer ran diamonds, East could ruff the fifth and be endplayed to lead a club into dummy’s tenace, or discard and be endplayed a trick later with his trump for the same club endplay.

A few pairs were lucky enough to be playing transfers over their opponents’ weak no-trump. That let North declare four hearts, and on a club lead into the tenace, the deal was all over. Still, only four pairs bid and made game here of the 25 tables in play.

Today's deal shows that even experts (and especially those playing complex systems) can have expensive accidents. In this deal from the 2011 Cavendish pairs championships, North and South disagreed about whether the four-diamond call followed by five no-trump — to pick a slam — suggested four diamonds or five. Put me in the camp that says four, though perhaps North could have bid five no-trump over three no-trump to avoid that problem.

In six diamonds declarer Alex Smirnov misguessed the trump suit, naturally enough, and that was a double disaster since the field had generally been restrained enough not to reach slam. (Some players had quite sensibly opened the South hand a 15-17 no-trump to stay low.)

Zia Mahmood was not one of the cautious Souths. He and Bob Hamman bid to six no-trump. Zia won the low-heart lead (best for the defenders, else a squeeze develops) and knocked out the club ace, East winning to return a low heart. Now the timing for the double-squeeze had gone, but Zia simply cashed off the spades from hand, led the diamond 10 to the diamond queen, then took the spade ace and club queen. At this point he decided that the opponents had been telling the truth in hearts, so the suit was 4-4. Since West was known to hold precisely three spades and two clubs, he had four diamonds. So Zia crossed to the diamond king and finessed in diamonds for 12 tricks. Five pairs made the no-trump slam; two went down.

The fifth session of the 2011 Cavendish began with Levin-Weinstein (who had won the title in three of the last four years) having what seemed like a nearly insuperable lead over the pack. The tournament had thus far featured wild deals, but the first three deals of the final session were quiet. Not so for the fourth.

At one table an American international player sitting North made the mistake of overcalling two clubs, then, after his opponents had reached four hearts, reopening with a bid of five clubs. He was doubled there, and the defenders collected an easy 500 — not bad, since four hearts had no play at all because of the defense’s club ruff.

Of course it was possible for North-South to do better than defend four hearts or go for a big penalty. Look at what happened to the eventual winners. Kit Woolsey, South, heard his partner, Fred Stewart, bid two clubs, then double four hearts for takeout.

He removed to four spades and, when doubled by West, ran to five diamonds. Nobody doubled that contract — which was just as well, since it proved to be unbeatable! After a top-heart lead, Woolsey ruffed in dummy, played the club ace, ruffed a club, then crossed to a top diamond and ruffed another club. East followed suit, while West could not overruff the diamond 10. Then declarer drew the last two trumps, ran the clubs, and had 12 tricks for a remarkable plus-620.

This deal came from the final match of the teams event at the Cavendish last year, won by Lou Ann O'Rourke, who retained her team's lead by defeating Roy Welland in the head-to-head match.

Welland had to fight to limit the damage here. His decision to lead his singleton club against four hearts, playing for ruffs, created an opportunity for declarer, one that would not have existed if the lead had been two top diamonds, which is what Steve Weinstein had done in the other room. All that declarer could do was ruff and set up the clubs, then rely on a favorable spade position. When none was forthcoming, he was down one.

However, against Welland’s club lead, declarer, Eric Greco, took the club ace, drew trumps, then cashed a second top club to find the bad news. He next led a diamond to the 10, jack and queen. It looks routine for West to exit by leading a second top diamond for declarer to ruff. But had Welland made that play, Greco would have pitched a spade instead of ruffing. That would have endplayed West, who would have to lead either spades or diamonds, allowing declarer to avoid losing a spade trick.

Welland saw this coming, so he underled his diamonds on the second round of the suit to Bart Bramley’s eight. Declarer could now do no better than ruff and eventually play for the spade king onside or some unlikely endplay from the spade spots. Down one, and a flat board.