West leads the heart king against your three-no-trump contract and persists with the suit. You win the heart ace on the third round, and with eight top tricks must aim to develop a ninth from one of the minor suits, without allowing West on lead. What is your plan?

Looking for a 3-3 break in the club suit can wait. The first priority is to seek an extra trick from the diamonds. If the suit breaks 3-3, two extra tricks will drop into your lap. Life will also be easy when East holds four diamonds, since you can concede a fourth round to the safe hand. The key situation occurs when West holds four diamonds; in that case you must aim to duck an early diamond trick to East.

At trick four, you lead the diamond nine, intending to run that card to East. Let’s suppose that West thwarts you temporarily by covering with the jack. You win the trick in dummy and return to your hand with the club king. You then lead the diamond four toward dummy. West cannot afford to rise with the 10 or you will make all five diamond tricks. He plays low and you cover with dummy’s seven, ducking the trick into the safe hand. East wins with the eight and you have ensured your contract when he follows suit. What is more, you will be spared the annoyance of finding that clubs were 3-3 all along!

In today's deal South had no problem in driving to game once his partner raised his suit. Making game proved to be a far more challenging proposition. In the contract of four spades I suggest that it would be the norm rather than the exception to rely on the club finesse here, but declarer can do considerably better.

After the lead of the heart king is taken by the ace, declarer draws trump and exits with a second heart. The best the defenders can do is for West to win and lead a club through, realizing that declarer must have a hole in the club suit — and that if all he needed to do was set up clubs, he would not have given up a heart.

Rather than waste dummy’s club jack, declarer plays low from the board and wins in hand, then leads a diamond, covering West’s card. East can take his diamond king and ace, but then has nowhere to turn. A club gives up the whole suit, while a diamond or heart lets South discard his club loser and ruff on the board.

For this line of play to succeed, all declarer needs is to find both high diamonds with East. If West has one of the top diamonds and more than one club, declarer falls back on the club finesse. Effectively this play turns a 50-50 contract into one where you will succeed at least two times out of three.

When the bidding suggests that suits will be breaking unkindly, that the key finesse will fail, and an endplay is not an option, it may be the intermediate cards that will come to the rescue.

Against four spades West kicked off with three rounds of clubs, South ruffing the third. Prospects looked poor since the diamond king was almost certainly wrong, and with West having announced at least 10 cards in the minors, the 2-2 trump break that declarer needed for his contract to succeed looked unlikely.

South continued with the spade ace, collecting the jack from West and the four from East and was now at the crossroads. If spades were indeed 2-2, then he could afford to lose a diamond, and either dummy’s last trump or the heart king would take care of his third diamond.

But instinct told him that the spade jack was bare, which meant that West was likely to hold a doubleton heart. If that doubleton included the jack or 10 — or both — dummy’s heart pips would provide two diamond discards.

So declarer played the heart ace, then the queen. When West produced the jack, declarer overtook the queen with the king and ran the nine. East covered, South ruffed, then returned to dummy with the spade king, West showing out. One diamond went away on the heart eight and another on the fifth heart, and declarer had 10 tricks.

Some ruffing-finesse deals offer you an extra-chance play in the same suit. When today's deal arose, declarer looked no further than the ruffing finesse without trying to combine his chances, and duly tumbled to defeat.

Would you have done better? Cover the East and West cards, and plan how you would play the spade slam when West leads the heart king.

The original declarer saw that a successful ruffing finesse in clubs would allow him to dispose of his heart loser. He won the heart lead, crossed to the spade ace, and cashed the club ace. He then returned to dummy with a trump and ran the club queen, throwing the heart loser from his hand. West won with the club king, and rather than trying to cash a heart — which would have been fatal to the defense — returned a diamond to his partner’s ace, to put the slam one down.

Declarer had missed his extra chance namely that West might hold a doubleton club king (which was a greater possibility than normal, with six hearts in his hand). After winning the heart lead, you should play a club to the ace. You return to dummy with the spade eight and ruff a club high, just in case West began with a doubleton club king. If the king does not appear, you cross to the spade 10 and take the ruffing finesse in clubs. (This is a far better chance than playing West for club K-x-x.)

Some of the most important techniques in bridge are those that assist you in establishing a suit. In today's deal, how would you play the spade slam when West leads the diamond 10? The key is to make full use of the available entries to dummy.

If spades break, you are home; what if they do not? West may have led from the diamond king but it is no more than a 50-50 chance. And rightly or wrongly, many players regard leading from a king as a sin comparable to coveting one’s neighbor’s ox. A rather better chance is that clubs will break 4-3 and that you can set up a second discard in the suit.

You rise with dummy’s diamond ace and lead low to your spade ace. You then unblock the club ace and return to dummy with the spade king, discovering that East holds a trump trick. All follow to the club king, on which you discard one of your diamond losers. You then ruff a club, and when you return to dummy with a top heart and lead a low club, there is nothing that East can do. If he ruffs the losing club with his master trump, you will discard your last diamond loser and claim the balance. No doubt East will prefer to discard on the fourth round of clubs. You ruff in hand, return to dummy with a heart, and lead the club jack. Whether or not East ruffs, you will throw your last diamond and make the slam.

In today's deal from the 2012 NEC tournament in Yokohama, five diamonds is a contract that looks hard to bring home with the club honors split.

At our featured table both the Indonesian and Japanese ladies played five diamonds on the defense of two rounds of spades. They ruffed and drew trump, then played three rounds of hearts early, ruffing in hand. When the Indonesian declarer next ran the club jack, the Japanese west failed to cover and declarer came home easily. The other declarer led a club to the 10, and now a club return killed any chances of a squeeze.

With the sight of all four hands, declarer does best to lead a club to the eight, 10 and queen after drawing trumps. East can later be caught in a simple heart-club squeeze.

So far so good — but what about East-West? Could they bring home four spades doubled if allowed to buy the hand? Three pairs did collect 10 tricks in spades – if you can get there from East, to avoid the heart ruff, the game is extremely hard to beat.

After a diamond lead, you ruff and draw trump, eliminating diamonds en route, then lead a heart to the 10. To defeat you, North must win cheaply and return a low heart. That is far from easy to do, especially if playing regular signals, since South cannot afford to play the heart nine on the first round of the suit, or North is truly endplayed on winning the heart queen!

Today's deal from last year's NEC trophy in Yokohama features the use (and abuse) of doubles. Let's look at the unsuccessful story first, where West opened one diamond and North doubled for takeout. East bid one heart, South joined in with two clubs, and West now doubled to show a three-card heart raise — the so-called support double.

Even if playing mandatory support doubles, this West hand surely fails to qualify since arguably it is neither an opening bid, nor does it have three-card support — but maybe I’m old-fashioned. Two hearts went down on repeated spade leads, when the fourth spade promoted a trump for South.

By contrast when Tony Nunn and Sartaj Hans were East-West, they constructed an auction, as shown here, to defend two clubs doubled. Put yourself in West’s shoes and pick a lead. Too easy, especially facing diamond shortage, right? No. Nunn led a small club, not his diamond sequence. Declarer won in hand and led a heart to the king, ducked by East, then played a diamond to West, who returned his second trump. A heart run around to the jack saw East play a third trump, won in dummy, and the ruffing finesse in hearts now set up the heart eight, but simultaneously ran declarer out of trump.

At this point declarer naturally misguessed spades by leading to the spade king, Hans could win his ace, unblock the diamond jack, then cross to his partner’s spade queen. Three more diamond winners meant a penalty of 800 out of nothing.

The NEC tournament from Yokohama, held this time last year, featured a Swiss tournament followed by a knockout for the eight surviving teams. The quarterfinal matches started with a defensive problem on the very first deal that might look easy — but at the table these things are never as simple as you might think.

In one room, where the auction had petered out in two no-trump, declarer won the spade lead and cashed his other high spade to unblock the suit, before playing a club toward dummy — perhaps making the position easier to defend than was necessary. East made the critical play for the defense when he ducked this trick, won the next club, and cleared the diamonds by playing ace, king and a third round. When declarer won the diamond queen and played a heart, West climbed up with the heart ace and cashed out the diamonds for down one.

Ducking the club might look like an instinctive play, but it was not one that was found at many other tables. For example, when defending three no-trump after a spade lead and a club play at trick two, East in the other room fell from grace by winning the first club and returning a low diamond. Declarer won in dummy and unblocked spades, crossed to the club jack, and cashed out dummy’s spades, then ran the clubs with the aid of the finesse and had nine tricks.

The final of the NEC tournament held in Yokohama this time last year was between Down Under from Australasia and the Bulgarian All Stars. Both teams are more aggressive bidders than most, and in the deal that followed the aggressive approach paid huge dividends, when coupled with some careful declarer play.

In one room for Down Under Tony Nunn as West overcalled one spade over one club and Sartaj Hans jumped to four spades, driving his opponents to the five-level.

In five hearts declarer needed clubs not to be unusually hostile so cashed the club ace and king early and was doubtless more hurt than surprised when East ruffed. Now there were two more tricks to lose, whatever declarer did.

But Martin Reid declared four hearts in the other room on an essentially uncontested auction, and paradoxically, the very bad break in clubs was good news, in a sense, for Bulgaria, since Reid now might have trouble making 10 tricks in hearts.

After an opening spade lead, declarer won in dummy and led a heart to hand and a diamond to the jack to cut the defenders’ communications. When East won and shifted to a club, Reid won his ace and carefully ducked a club. Now whether West took his club queen or East ruffed, declarer could now arrange to ruff clubs in dummy and hold his losers to one more trump trick.

That swing made the match safe for Down Under — the first win for an Antipodean team in this event for over a decade.