In today's deal from the finals of the Women's World Championship between England and China, which finished in a 1 IMP win for England, a nice defensive play paid dividends.

Both Wests opened a conventional call of two diamonds to show a weak-two in one major or the other. The English North had no convenient way into the auction on the first round, then had to guess whether to bid or pass on the next. The singleton heart king was of dubious value, and her main suit was hardly robust: She decided to pass.

The defenders led a trump and declarer was easily held to six tricks, minus-150.

By contrast the Chinese North took immediate action, showing a balanced 13-15, after which South jumped to the obvious game.

West led the heart seven, declarer winning with dummy’s king. With some good guesses 11 tricks are available, but when declarer started with a club to the queen, Heather Dhondy followed smoothly with the eight!

Naturally, declarer now ran the club 10. East won with the jack, cashed the spade king, and then went back to hearts. Declarer ducked, won the next heart, and knocked out the club ace, assuming that East would win the trick. All she would then have needed to do was locate the diamond queen, except that it was West who now produced the club ace and proceeded to cash her heart tricks for plus-300.

Today's deal has two problems in one. In both cases you play in six spades, but in one case you receive the unfriendly heart lead, which sets up a winner for the defenders immediately. In the other case you receive a passive club lead. How should your approaches differ?

The deal, like all this week’s deals, comes from the world championships four years ago in Beijing.

West led the heart three and declarer won with the ace, drew trumps, eliminated the clubs ending in hand, and exited with a heart. East allowed West to win and he exited with a low diamond. (I’ve been told the jack is the best shot, but it never seems to work when I try it.) Declarer took East’s queen with the ace, and the diamond finesse gave him plus-920.

In the other room the lead was a trump. Is there a better plan than the one described above? Yes, your best play is to draw trumps and go after diamonds to establish a discard for your heart loser. It is a very close decision whether to lead them from the top or finesse twice against West. So the best approach is to test clubs before playing diamonds. If West shows any real spade or club length, you should go for two finesses against her by leading to the nine, then to the king and finessing. If West appears to be shorter in clubs than East, play diamonds from the top.

The world championships have just finished in Lille, so to mark that, this week's deals come from the last event, four years ago, in Beijing.

Our first deal features a double-game swing in the match between China and Hungary. Would you open one spade as East or make a one-spade overcall as West? When the Hungarians were East-West, both passed at their first opportunity. North responded one no-trump to the one-diamond opening, East cuebid two diamonds to show the majors, and Harangozo now jumped to four spades over South’s three-diamond call to end the auction. He was not taxed to come to 10 tricks since, after the one-no-trump response, he could not misguess the spade suit.

In the other room the auction was as shown. It takes a heart lead and a heart ruff (or a heart switch after the unlikely lead of the club ace) to defeat five diamonds. Even after West led a spade, however, Peter Trenka had to play well to land the doubled contract.

He ruffed the opening lead, pulled trump, then led a club to the king and ace. He ruffed the spade return, discarded a heart on the fourth round of clubs, and called for a low heart. With a count on the West hand, declarer knew his only chance was to find him with a singleton heart queen. There were no more entries to dummy, so it would not have helped to find East with both missing heart honors. Declarer therefore put up the heart king and was rewarded when the queen fell. He lost just two tricks for plus 750.

Today's deal was a fascinating clash between Zia Mahmood and Tony Forrester, with the latter coming out on top, as he did in the event as a whole. A big win in the last round gave the Gold Cup team a clear victory, allowing Andy Robson to equal Zia's record of seven wins.

When Forrester led the club-king lead against three no-trump, Zia won and fired back a club, which Forrester ducked. Quite reasonably, Zia took the diamond finesse now. Forrester won and faced an awkward problem. He cashed the club queen (on which dummy threw a heart) to avoid being thrown in with that card, then exited with the spade jack. This should have been fatal. Zia put on the queen, but failed to unblock the 10 from his hand.

Had he done so, he would have been able to get home in two ways. The first would have been by leading the heart king, and when West wins and returns the heart jack, declarer ducks and West is endplayed. Or Zia could have crossed to the spade ace, cashed all his minor-suit winners, and exited with his last spade. If that were the 10, West could duck it, but as it is, declarer would have been able to put West on lead and come to his ninth trick in the majors.

Zia did not know the diamonds were 5-1 at this time, but the spade-jack exit might have given him a clue to the layout.

At the 2011 Lederer, Artur Malinowski, declarer in today's deal, won the award for best-played hand. The play was simple, but his reasoning was excellent. After the normal start to the auction, Janet de Botton made a responsive double with the North hand, and East competed further to four hearts. When this came back to de Botton, she tried again with four no-trump. (In a similar position one North had tried an intellectual bid of four spades, but declarer was forced to go one off on the club lead, either sustaining a ruff or losing control.)

Against Malinowski’s contract of five clubs, Tony Priday led the heart king and switched to a spade, which cleared up any doubts in that suit. Declarer won East’s king with the ace, then played the club king and finessed the jack for plus 400. Why did he do this? There were two reasons: the first was that if East had been dealt a doubleton club, he would have been less inclined to go on to four hearts and, equally, West might have led or switched to a club with a doubleton rather than playing a dangerous spade. With queen-third of clubs he was never leading one.

The odds might favor playing the bidder for the missing high cards, but here the inferences pointed in the other direction: East appeared to have extra shape, and thus West was more likely to have long clubs.

At the 2011 Lederer there are awards for best-bid, -played and -defended hand. This one belongs in the category of "You should have seen the one that got away."

Andy Robson had an opportunity in this deal where, like many declarers, he found himself in six hearts.

On a minor-suit lead there are enough entries to establish and enjoy the diamonds. However, Justin Hackett found the most testing start, a spade, and Andy won and ducked a diamond. East won and returned a second spade, perforce won in the dummy. Robson won and cashed two rounds of hearts and could no longer recover from the unfriendly breaks in the red suits.

The correct line at trick four is to cash the heart and diamond aces (you have no chance on a 5-1 break) and ruff a diamond high. Now the diamonds are known to be breaking 4-2, and when you cross to the heart nine, you also know the trumps are 3-1.

This forces you to fall back on your last chance, namely that spades were 3-3, by ruffing a diamond high, crossing to another heart in dummy, and throwing a spade on the long diamond. Then you can ruff out the spade, and finally use your club ace to enjoy the 13th spade. So, the third chance, an unlikely one, would have worked.

In the end you finish up ruffing two diamonds and a spade in your hand, establishing a long card in both of dummy’s suits.

Today's deal from the 2011 Lederer requires no skill in the play, since I am confident every reader of my column would find a way to take 13 tricks. But bidding to the grand slam is another matter. Let's take a look at the sole pair who not only managed it, but found their way to seven no-trump

There is a bit of a myth that Zia Mahmood is a law unto himself in the auction, but he showed that he could bid constructively on this hand. However, it was David Gold’s judgment that made it all possible. The opening no-trump showed 15-17, but the aces and kings, coupled with the two four-card suits and the builders in the long-suits mean that this was an accurate assessment of the hand’s true worth.

When Zia transferred to spades, Gold re-evaluated his hand, breaking the transfer with a jump to three spades. He did have another sequence to show a suitable hand for spades with a maximum in high-cards, so he was limited by failing to do that.

After two cuebids, Zia bid Roman Keycard Blackwood for spades, finding the two missing aces, then asked for specific kings that had not been previously cued. East (who had already showed the diamond king) now showed the heart king, and Zia thought he could count six spades, three hearts, two diamonds and two clubs, and indeed was able to claim the grand slam when spades broke 2-1. This won the pair the award for the best-bid hand.

At last year's Lederer tournament, Nicola Smith and Sally Brock demonstrated the form that has won them three world titles as partners or teammates. And they needed all their experience to break the seemingly impregnable slam reached in today's deal by Norwegian Thomas Charlsen.

North’s two-club call was an artificial game-force, and two no-trump showed a three-card spade raise. This was followed by Key Card Blackwood to reach the good spade slam. Nicola led the heart six, consistent with her actual holding, but also consistent with an original holding of J-7-6, J-8-7-6 or J-8-7-6-2. Sally defended well by false-carding with the queen when dummy played low, and Charlsen took his normal line in spades of low to the ace, followed by the running of the jack, so that he could pick up Q-(9)-x-x with East.

When Smith won her spade queen, she continued with the heart seven, and Charlsen decided to believe the opponents rather than playing to establish diamonds with one ruff. When he put in the heart nine, it was all over, and an unbeatable slam had been defeated.

Some commentators on Bridge Base thought Nicola would not lead from the heart jack against a slam, but when you look, you will see that the defenders have all four queens, so they might well have been pushed to find a safe lead. They had to lead some suit after all, and J-x-x-(x) might well have been the least evil. This defense earned Nicola and Sally the award for the best-defended hand.