When today's deal was played at the Dyspeptics Club, South was at the reins in his favorite contract of three no-trump. West led the heart 10, dummy contributed the queen, and East the king. South gave very little thought to ducking the trick — he tried it once and didn't like it. Instead he won with his ace and took a losing club finesse. East cleared hearts, and declarer held up his jack (for no particular reason), won the next heart, and finessed in spades. West won and cashed out the hearts for down one, while South was mournfully complaining about a gypsy's curse that he claimed had doomed every finesse he would ever take for the rest of his life.

North, noting that both diamond honors were also badly located, asked if South would be prepared to bet against the fate of the contract in the hands of a competent declarer. South agreed to the bet, but what had North seen that South had missed?

Say declarer ducks the first trick, wins the heart return, and plays the spade queen from hand next. The defense is now powerless, since West’s entry card has been dislodged. Declarer can win the return and go after clubs, secure in the knowledge that if the finesse loses, the nondanger hand, East, will have no way to reach West for his good hearts.

This example of attacking the entry to the danger hand first is especially hard to spot because the spades have to be led from hand.

Today's deal contains points of interest both for defenders and for declarer.

Looking at all four hands, can South make six hearts on the lead of the spade queen?

If South ruffs the opening lead and plays ace and another club, East must ruff his partner’s winner and play a trump, restricting South to 11 tricks. If East hoards his trump, not ruffing his partner’s winner, then the 4-0 break comes to declarer’s rescue. He can simply arrange to ruff his two club losers in dummy and come to 12 tricks painlessly.

Of course, declarer does not know in advance about the bad trump break, but he must plan to counter this line of defense. What he must do at trick two is play the diamond king, then cash the diamond ace, and ruff a diamond high.

He has now established the diamonds as a threat against East. When he now plays ace and another club, East again must ruff and play a trump, or South reverts to the crossruff line. The difference is that when South wins the trump in dummy and finds the bad break, East is left with only two trumps instead of three.

South simply plays a winning diamond from the dummy. East must ruff again, but now a second heart to dummy draws East’s last trump and provides access to dummy for the last time. So both of declarer’s club losers can be discarded on dummy’s two remaining diamond winners.

Years ago, there was an annual BOLS bridge-tip competition, which contained a wealth of material for bridge journalists. Zia Mahmood won 20 years ago with a tip to the effect that defenders generally cover honors if they can.

This tip was used to good effect in the following hand played by Jeremy Dhondy.

In the other room the inelegant contract of four hearts had come home when East led a spade. Against four spades, though, West led a club. Declarer won this in hand and ruffed a club. Now he had the problem of which red-suit finesse to take. With Zia’s tip in mind, he led dummy’s diamond queen.

As the original reporter of this deal commented, in retrospect it was foolish of East to cover this card. Why would declarer play on this suit in this manner if he did not have the ace and jack? And if that were the case, then covering the diamond queen could only make life easier for him.

Had East resisted the urge to cover, declarer would have played for the red-suit kings to be the other way around. He would surely have risen with his diamond ace, ruffed his last club, and run the heart queen. West would have won his king and the defenders would have had two trump tricks and the diamond king to come. At the table, when the diamond queen was covered, declarer unblocked diamonds, ruffed a club, pitched a heart on the diamonds, and gave up two trumps.

Because this deal was the last of a session at the 1st World Mind Sports Games, maybe the players were tired, which is perhaps why some took their eyes off the ball.

A low-heart lead away from the ace could lead to the defeat of the club slam, but who would find that?

At the table, West led a spade and declarer took the free finesse. The queen held, but declarer made the fatal error of discarding a low diamond from hand. This would not have cost if trump had not divided 4-0. A heart discard — or even the diamond ace — would have saved declarer. But South should have foreseen that the diamond queen might be needed as a late entry back to dummy.

Declarer cannot afford to cash a high trump from dummy, and so does best to work on spades. The spade ace (for a second heart discard), then a spade ruff, is followed by a high club from hand, getting the bad news. Now comes a low diamond toward the queen. It does not matter whether West inserts the king — the diamond entry to dummy will still be there. As you can see, though, the early diamond discard blocked the suit.

When West takes his diamond king, then whatever he returns, another spade ruff can be engineered, setting up that suit. After South cashes his last trump, he can re-enter dummy via the diamond queen and draw trumps.

There is a lot of talk in the bridge press about the increasing average age of bridge players, and speculation about whether this signals the eventual death of our game. For the past 15 years or so, there has been an international series for Under-20s, and it is to their ranks that we must look for our players of the future.

The USA has been moderately successful in putting out decent teams in the schools categories, and the junior players of a decade ago are rising to the top in national events — but there is still a way to go.

Declarer in today’s deal from the UK was a then 18-year-old Ben Paske, playing with his 16-year-old brother Tom.

Against three no-trump West chose to lead his own heart suit rather than his partner’s spades. (A spade would have been no more successful.) Declarer ducked the first heart and won the continuation. He then tried the club ace and king. When that suit failed to break, marking West with the missing queen, declarer played a diamond to the king, a diamond to his jack and cashed the diamond ace and six.

Now all that was needed was to exit with the spade jack. East won his queen but had only spades left. When he played the spade king, declarer ducked. Now East had no option but to lead another spade, allowing declarer to take the marked finesse for his ninth trick.

The line between triumph and abject failure at Board-a-Match scoring is often finer than at any other form of the game. The scoring works like that in pairs but with only two tables in play. You either win or lose the board no matter what the difference in score might be unless the result is an exact tie. In other words, if your opponents make six spades, you win the board for making six no-trump, but lose the board by just the same margin if you miss slam or go down in the grand slam or play six of a minor suit.

In this deal from the 1993 Reisinger Board-a-Match Teams, Al Rand found a way to set a slam contract two tricks when declarer failed to see what was going on.

The bidding had convinced Rand that one of his opponents had a void in clubs, so he led his singleton diamond instead of a top club. Of course a club lead (or even a heart lead, which would have been my choice) makes declarer’s task impossible, but one can understand Rand’s thinking.

Declarer took the diamond lead in dummy and passed the spade nine, which Rand ducked smoothly. Declarer, suspecting nothing, took a second trump finesse, and the roof fell in. Rand took his king and quickly cashed two clubs.

If declarer had read Rand’s mind and gone up with the ace on the second trump lead, he would have taken all 13 tricks. But he wound up with only 10.

Today's deal was provided to me by Alan Sontag. It came up in a practice match in New York, organized by Mark Gordon before the Seattle Nationals in November. Mark was the hero in a delicate contract of four hearts. Against this contract in the other room West led a club, and declarer had made the normal play of tackling trumps by leading the suit from the top, going down one.

In the other room David Berkowitz had quite reasonably elected to lead a diamond rather than a club, which does not appear to make any significant difference, but Gordon was quick to seize on his extra chance. He took the diamond king at the first trick, cashed the heart ace and king, then played the diamond ace, ruffed a diamond, crossed to the club ace, and led the fourth diamond, discarding his club loser.

West was forced to win the trick and exit with a club, letting Gordon ruff and play for his only remaining chance of finding West with an embarrassing spade holding. When he exited from hand with a low spade, West won the trick, but whatever he returned allowed declarer to avoid a spade loser and concede just one more trick to the master trump.

The defenders are helpless in the ending, since once trumps break badly, declarer’s only legitimate chance against excellent defense is to play a low spade as he did, and find West with both spade honors or honor-10 doubleton.

When his partner opened with a weak two-spade bid, North could visualize a grand slam if South held the ace and king of trump. His leap to five no-trump passed exactly this message: "Please bid the grand slam if you hold two of the three top honors." Note that it would not have solved North's problem had he used Roman Key-card Blackwood instead, since the heart ace would have been worthless.

Since South held only one of the three top trump honors, the bidding stopped in a small slam. How would you play this when West leads ace and another trump?

There are 11 tricks on top, including one heart ruff. Which minor suit should you play first?

Declarer decided to play two top clubs, intending to ruff the suit good if a 4-2 break came to light. When West showed out on the second round of clubs, declarer took a diamond ruff, hoping for a 3-3 break in that suit. No luck came his way and he had to go one down.

Curiously, it is better to play on diamonds first. If that suit breaks 5-1, you still have the one (ruffing) entry that you need to take advantage of a 4-2 break in clubs. Diamonds break 4-2, in fact, so you can easily establish a long card in that suit.

The general principle is to play first on the suit that may need more entries to establish and reach the long cards.

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.