I’m reluctant to impose sophisticated conventional calls on my readers, but in today’s deal the North-South pair were using an artificial series of calls after Stayman to distinguish between those balanced hands with slam interest that had four–card support for partner, and those that did not. Their agreement was to use a jump to four no-trump after Stayman as quantitative, not Blackwood, and to use four diamonds as agreeing partner’s major with a balanced hand.

South heard his partner make a slam-try and decided his extra shape and nice controls were enough to drive to slam after Blackwood. Indeed, six hearts was a decent contract, but required careful play.

When West led his singleton club, declarer could see he had six tricks in the side suits. To come to 12 tricks, he would need to score two ruffs in one hand or the other and draw trumps after that. Thus he needed to play for ruffs before drawing trump.

He took the opening club lead with the ace and returned the suit. West showed out, correctly discarding a spade rather than ruffing in. Declarer won his club king and now took the top spades, ruffed a spade low, then gave up a club. East won and played a fourth club, and declarer ruffed high and drew trumps, relying on the 3-2 break.

Notice that if declarer plays to take diamond ruffs in dummy with a low trump, then a high trump, East can overruff early and defeat the slam.

How will you give yourself the best chance in your no-trump game when West leads the spade king? You hold up the spade ace until the third round, leaving East with no spade to play.

So far, so good. Now four diamond tricks will give you the contract, but you need to duck a diamond trick into East, the safe hand. Any ideas as to how to proceed?

If you simply play ace, king and another diamond, you will succeed only when East holds three of the five outstanding diamonds. A better idea is to lead twice toward the dummy, planning to duck if the lowest missing diamond (the seven) appears from West. So at trick two you lead a low diamond from your hand. If West plays the seven, you will duck in the dummy, knowing that East, the nondanger hand, will have to overtake. It makes no difference what East returns. When diamonds break 3-2, you will score four tricks in the suit and claim the contract.

Suppose instead that West inserts the diamond 10 on the first round. You will win with dummy’s ace and return to your hand with a club (or a heart) to lead another diamond. This time, West has to play the seven, or you will make all five diamond tricks. You duck in the dummy, and again East has to overtake with his remaining card. Once more, you have nine tricks.

When this deal came up at the rubber-bridge table, where the priority is to make your contract, not struggle for possibly irrelevant overtricks, declarer played too fast and suffered the consequences.

After a Stayman auction, North-South identified their heart fit, and the opening lead was the spade king to the ace. Declarer immediately won and led a diamond to the queen to play a trump to the king. When this held, but West showed out, declarer was doomed to lose three trump tricks and a spade, since East was left with the A-Q-9 of trumps poised over dummy’s J-10 of hearts.

The best policy on the deal is to focus on what you can afford to lose. The answer is that you do not mind losing two trump tricks, just so long as you do not lose three. After the initial spade lead, the defenders are not threatening a ruff, so you can afford to tackle trump safely.

Win the spade lead, then immediately lead a low heart at trick two toward the J-10. This limits declarer’s losses to two trumps and a spade, no matter which defender has the four trumps. The point is that once you discover who has the long trump, you can take the appropriate evasive action to negotiate the hearts, and the defenders can score only their two high trumps whatever they do.

Some deals present problems for the expert that would not occur to a beginner or an intermediate. So if you do not find the winning line in today’s deal, you can console yourself knowing that when an international player was presented with this slam, he went down like a stone. Thus you may be able to put yourself in good company – or if you succeed, you can claim your spot at the next world championship.

You must plan the play in six hearts after North’s support double has found an easy way for you to identify your fit and to reach the heart slam. West hits on the lead of the diamond queen.

Which hand will you win the trick in – and what will you do next? If West has jack-fourth of trumps, you would need to guess that from the start and in practice you will never do that. If East has J-x-x-x of trumps you can pick up the suit easily. But what if East has five trumps?

To preserve your entries, win your diamond king, play a heart to dummy’s king, and discover the hostile break. Next take a heart finesse, then lead a spade to the king and take another heart finesse. That allows you to draw trump and knock out the club ace while you still have a diamond entry to reach dummy’s clubs.

If you start trumps by leading the ace, you will be unable to pick up the suit.

Today's deal sees how modern bidding and the use of conventions can occasionally solve what could be knotty problems in the auction. (Of course, as we shall see, it is all very well to bid to the best contract, but you also have to make it!).

North described his powerhouse by bidding his long suits, then repeating his spades, in an auction that his partnership played as game-forcing. Over South’s rebid of three no-trump, North decided to commit the hand to slam, and his jump to five no-trump offered a choice of slams, strongly suggesting his precise hand pattern. South was delighted to propose playing in his chunky five-card suit, and North had no reason to mistrust his partner’s judgment.

Take a moment or two – or maybe more – to plan the play in six clubs on the lead of a top heart. The normal route seems to rely on ruffing out the spades (taking heart ruffs in dummy seems to set up trump winners for the defenders). But the risk of overruffs or losing control is very real. So what plan is best?

The answer is to win the heart ace and immediately to duck a spade! The defenders can achieve nothing by forcing dummy to ruff a heart – declarer unblocks the trump king, ruffs a spade in hand, then draws trump and claims. Likewise, on a diamond return at trick three, declarer wins the king, crosses to the club king, ruffs a spade, then can draw trump, using the diamond ace as the entry for the spades.

Hands as strong as South's frequently pose a problem on the rebid. In my opinion it is the smallest lie to jump to two no-trump here, because you can still often find your way back to spades when that is appropriate, while you have simultaneously limited your hand and right-sided the play in no-trump. As you can see, three no-trump would have been a comfortable spot.

But at the table South did not see it that way. He invented a call in a nonexistent club suit, and after that his partnership did quite well to stay out of the hopeless diamond slam.

How should you plan the play for 11 tricks in diamonds after the lead of the club queen? The point is that should the heart ace be offside, the contract will almost certainly be defeated — unless West can somehow be thrown in on the third round of spades, with that suit breaking 3-3. But you can do better than that. In fact the game can always be made if either spades split or the heart ace is onside.

If spades break 3-3, a discard can be found for a losing heart by ducking the opening lead. Then declarer wins the club ace, draws trump, and discards a spade on the club king. He ruffs out the spades and can eventually re-enter dummy with a trump to cash the long spade. If spades do not break, declarer falls back on the heart ace being onside.

The world is full of stories of bridge deals where a ridiculous play succeeded, or the correct play failed. In today's example West was not only a fine player, but also a practical joker. Moreover, he was playing against two of his least favorite opponents, both of whom could be relied on to bid accurately, but neither of whom possessed a detectable sense of humor.

A competitive auction saw North-South reach four hearts after flirting with a slam-try. When West led his singleton diamond, he could see prospects of defeating the game would hinge on whether his partner had both the ace and king of diamonds. If so, the defenders could surely take two diamonds and two trump tricks.

Alas for West, when East won his diamond ace and continued with the diamond queen, it was South who had the diamond king. It was easy for the defenders to take three tricks, but where would the fourth come from? East surely had no more than one trump.

Inspiration dawned! The defenders might prevail if East had the singleton heart king. West ruffed the second diamond with his heart ace and led his small trump to his partner, giving him the entry to cash the diamond jack for one down.

At the end of the deal West leant forward and apologized for accidentally wasting his heart ace. “If I had ruffed low, would we have beaten them two tricks?” he asked, and was rewarded when South started banging his head on the table.

In today's deal North first showed a limit raise, then indirectly defined his hand by suggesting three no-trump as a final contract. Notwithstanding that, South felt he was worth a slam try of four clubs, and as soon as he found the heart control opposite, he drove to slam, assuming that his partner must have a top spade for his no-trump call at his second turn.

The small slam certainly looks like a fine spot, but the bad trump break complicated matters somewhat. However, South was equal to the task.

The opening lead of the heart queen was taken in dummy, and a low trump was led to South’s queen, disclosing the bad split.

When West discarded, South led out the diamond king and surrendered the trick to West’s ace. Back came a spade, which declarer won in dummy. He next ruffed a diamond low, then had to take the risk of crossing to a second spade in dummy to ruff another diamond. Now came the club ace and two more rounds of trump, extracting all of East’s clubs. This produced a three-card ending, in which dummy had the spade three and diamond jack, plus a small heart, while South discarded his spade ace to retain three hearts. West could not discard his spade jack or diamond queen without setting up a winner in dummy for a repeating squeeze on himself, so he pitched a heart. Declarer now led to his heart king and cashed his two remaining hearts to bring home the slam.

In today's deal South was looking at a complex hand when he heard his partner jump to two no-trump to show the minors. On the plus side for defense he had a void in one of his partner's two suits, and additionally he had the ace and king of hearts in a suit where he knew his partner was likely to be short. As against that, the vulnerability was right to try to push the opponents around, and he did have a big fit for diamonds. That was enough to tempt him to jump all the way to game. West doubled, and found the incisive lead of ace and another trump. (Had he not done so, declarer would have developed the play on crossruff lines and collected 12 tricks if he judged the play well.)

After the repeated trump leads, declarer has only 10 top tricks (two hearts, one spade and seven trumps) because of the bad heart break. Can you see what declarer should do to overcome this defense?

Declarer won the second trump on board and immediately passed the heart 10 around to West’s jack. West tried the club king next, but declarer ruffed and cashed the heart ace and king, throwing clubs from dummy.

Next came the heart nine for a ruffing finesse against West’s queen. West could cover, but declarer’s remaining hearts in hand were good. Declarer had established the extra heart winner for his 11th trick.