Today's deal is from Robert Ewen and Jeff Rubens' new book, "It's all in the game." As I mentioned last week, this book melds humorous and instructive deals. Today's is a real-life affair, in which a name from the past found a neat play to recover from his unfortunate opening lead.

A trump lead would defeat four spades by force. But when the club 10 was led, North’s queen was played, and East had to duck. South cashed the heart ace and led a diamond to the queen and king. Now when South regained the lead and cashed the diamond ace, the fall of the J-10 allowed him to bang down the two top trumps: making four.

At another table, however, Peter Leventritt recovered from his opening lead by smoothly ducking the diamond queen. Then, when South cashed the diamond ace and East followed with the jack, South pictured his original holding as K-J-10. When declarer tried to ruff a low diamond in dummy, East overruffed and gave West a club ruff. West led another diamond, giving East another overruff of dummy. Finally, a further club from East promoted a trump winner for the fourth and setting defensive trick.

At IMPs, declarer could have ensured the contract (except against a 5-1 trump split) by abandoning diamonds temporarily when the jack dropped, and cashing two high spades. This play, however, could lose the contract if diamonds were 3-3 and spades 5-1. I’ve seen many deceptive ducks, but never one done in quite this way for quite this reason.

Every year at the beginning of March, the English Bridge Union runs their ranked master pairs' events. Whatever your ranking in the EBU's masterpoint scheme, there is a pairs event for you. The highest ranking of these is the Grand Masters Pairs. Today's hand is from that event and shows that sometimes even the least promising suits can be set up to advantage.

With a singleton spade, South had little choice but to overcall two clubs rather than doubling, and now North’s good distribution persuaded him to raise pre-emptively to the five-level.

Apparently several pairs went down in five clubs after a diamond lead, failing to see the possibilities in the spade suit. The correct line of play is to duck the diamond and win the continuation. Now you must play a trump to hand and discard the diamond losers on the heart ace and king. But what next? It is important to see that you need to ruff two hearts and a diamond in the dummy, but do not have the communications to do so without giving up the lead. When you do this, the opponents will surely play another trump, and now you will be a trick short.

After discarding your diamonds, you must play a spade and duck it in dummy. Win the trump return in the dummy, ruff a spade, ruff a heart, and ruff a spade. When the ace and king come tumbling down, you can ruff another heart and cash your spade winners for 11 tricks.

Today's deal comes from a collection of bridge tips by David Bird, who is best known for his humorous collections of stories about the Abbot and many others.

Against your contract of four spades West leads the diamond ace and switches to the spade five. Plan the play, and if you want to cover up the East and West cards to make your task harder, feel free to do so!

The obvious source of extra tricks is the clubs, but to establish additional winners in that suit, you have to surrender a trick. If you simply draw trump and duck a club, East will win and play a diamond through. You might try to lead a club to the king and duck the return, but if East flies up with the queen on the second round (or West unblocks his jack on the first round), the defenders will have the upper hand.

Is there any way that you can establish clubs without letting East on lead? Yes and no. What you have to do is find a way to get rid of that club loser, while losing the lead to West, not East. Instead of playing three rounds of clubs, win the spade shift from West in dummy (while taking care to preserve your spade two in hand), and play the heart king, pitching a club. Later you will be able to ruff the clubs good without surrendering the lead, and you can then cross to dummy with the spade four to cash them.

We have all seen hands where you are declarer in three no-trump, and you need to hold up your ace for at least one round to cut the defenders' communications.

Then there are some more-advanced hands where you have K-J-x and the lead is a small card to the queen. You may have to duck to sever opponents’ communications (when the suit breaks 5-2 and you need to lose the lead to your right-hand opponent). Today’s deal takes that principle a step further.

Against three no-trump doubled, West led the heart four to the jack and queen. When declarer discovered the bad diamond break, he played a club, but East rose with the ace and played a second heart for one down.

Declarer felt that he had been unlucky not only with the diamond break, but also that West had not led spades, and even that East had a second heart to play. However, a careful look at the spot-card led at trick one would have told him East had two hearts. If the heart jack was singleton, then West’s initial holding would have been A-K-9-7-4-3, from which he would have led the seven.

So hearts are 5-2, East must have the club ace, and diamonds strongly rate to be breaking badly, given the final double. Declarer should have ducked the heart at trick one. Now nothing can beat him if he leads a club to the jack after finding the bad diamond break.

Curiously, the way to beat three spades here is by leading dummy's short suit. However, although Tom Hanlon and Hugh McGann of Ireland did not find this lead when representing Europe in the 2008 Buffett Bridge Cup against the USA, they still found an ingenious way to defeat the partscore.

Against three spades Hanlon led a low heart to the two and king — McGann couldn’t be certain that South did not hold the singleton jack. At trick two, McGann found the fine switch to a low diamond, which declarer elected to win in hand. Had he taken with dummy’s ace instead, he would have been better placed.

Then came the trump king. If West wins this, then whether he returns a trump or a diamond, declarer can duck a club and later have two clubs available for diamond discards. But Hanlon withheld his ace, and now South could not chance playing another trump, as the defenders could then remove dummy’s trump and knock out the diamond ace before the clubs were set up.

Declarer therefore continued with three rounds of clubs, East pitching a diamond on the third. In with the club queen, Hanlon essentially returned a diamond. Since it was still unsafe to lead another trump, declarer continued with a fourth round of clubs. On this, McGann, to deter his partner from returning a heart, discarded the heart ace! Hanlon duly trumped the club and returned a diamond for East to overruff dummy. The trump ace was the defenders’ fifth trick.

After seeing dummy, on the auction shown, would you think your next move might be critical? If not, give the problem a couple of extra seconds' thought!

The hand is from the Individual at the 1st World Mind Sports Games, held in Beijing, where Pairs scoring was in use.

First, let’s see the action at the table where Gay Keaveney of Ireland was partnering Bob Hamman of the USA. Hamman had no easy way to get his values across, but decided to treat his hand as invitational, banking on his three black honors to be working overtime, and treating his spades as a three-card suit. Had this been teams, Keaveney would have bid the spade game, but at matchpoints he preferred to be circumspect and try to insure a plus score.

Against three spades West led the diamond queen; East rose with the ace and returned a diamond. Keaveney played his king, cashed the club ace and king and got off play with a third club. The trump return from East came too late. South could not now be prevented from ruffing his fourth club in dummy and coming to 10 tricks, losing just two diamonds and a club.

It was Patrick Huang of Chinese Taipei who found the defense to beat four spades. On winning the first trick with the diamond ace, he recognized the danger and switched to a trump, and continued with a second trump when in with a club. That killed the club ruff and set the game.

This month on Tuesdays I shall be running deals from a new book, by Robert Ewen and Jeff Rubens, editor of the Bridge World, the monthly publication that is generally acknowledged to be the world's most interesting bridge magazine.

The new book is called “It’s All in the Game,” a mixture of humorous and informative deals, together with a fair selection of mind-bending problems. Quite a few of the latter demonstrate that bridge and reality have only a small overlap. I can guarantee that all my readers will find something to enjoy.

Here is Ewen at work as South in a chapter mischievously trying to prove that one can take certain dictums at bridge too far — such as “second hand low.” Against four spades West stumbled upon a club lead; East topped the king with the ace and shifted to a trump. Ewen won and led out the three top hearts. “Second hand low!” chortled West, as he carefully ruffed with the lower of his two remaining trumps, the seven. Declarer would have made the contract had West discarded (he would pitch a diamond from dummy and score his 10th trick with a diamond ruff), or if had he ruffed with the spade nine (he would then use the spade eight as an entry to run the clubs), but West’s actual play left him without recourse.

Ewen overruffed and led the club queen for a diamond discard, but West ruffed, then cashed the two top diamonds for a one-trick set.

Check out The Bridge World on the net for details about the book.

In today's deal North's jump to five hearts showed good trumps and nothing else to say — just what South needed to hear. Declarer was lucky enough to receive a diamond lead against his slam, and therefore was in a position almost to ensure his contract.

South took the diamond queen lead with his king, drew trumps in three rounds ending in dummy, then cashed the ace and king of spades. Bad news: the 5-1 break meant that he could no longer take more than 11 tricks.

If declarer had received a club lead against his contract of six hearts, playing spades from the top would have been fine, since the defenders had established a winner and would be in a position to cash it as soon as they obtained the lead. So declarer would have needed to get the spades going without losing a trick to make his slam. (Declarer cannot afford spades to break worse than 4-2 — unless the jack is singleton — because two club discards are needed in dummy so that South’s second club can be ruffed.)

But after the diamond lead, once trumps are found to be 3-2, there is a cast-iron play for the slam. Win the third round of trumps in dummy, then run the spade 10. The spade jack is the only trick lost. Declarer can win the return, unblock spades, then run spades. Now dummy’s club losers vanish on the spades, and a club can then be ruffed in dummy.