In today's deal from a charity game in honor of Arthur Loeb to benefit the Lenox Hill Neighborhood House, how do you find out scientifically whether you want to be in slam?

Once hearts are set as trump, North can ask for key-cards (the four aces and the trump queen). If the response is zero or three, or one or four, the cheapest step asks for the trump queen; the response in the trump suit denies it, and a bid in any other suit promises it. If the responder has two key cards, the immediate response either shows or denies the trump queen.

Today, however, slam has two chances, the first being to find the trump queen, the second to discard North’s clubs on declarer’s spades. On a non-spade lead such as the diamond jack, you should cash the heart ace and unblock both spade honors. Only then do you lead a heart to the king, trying to cash South’s spade winners to pitch dummy’s clubs.

However, at a few tables where keycard Blackwood was not in use, West led the club ace against six hearts, and now the diamond jack shift went to the ace, eight and six.

How to play the trump suit now? After the ace and a small heart sees East follow twice, the old adage is “Eight ever, nine never.” However, East’s play of the diamond eight was surely significant, suggesting shortage. Since West appeared to have many more diamonds than East, the heart finesse was the odds-on play, and declarer duly took it to make his slam.

How do you plan to make four hearts after West leads the spade king?

The nub of this problem is that you want to avoid losing three diamond tricks, but surely West is the favorite to have the diamond ace.

Your first step is to duck the first round of spades, then win the spade ace, and draw trump in three rounds. Next you cash the club ace, king and queen.

Now lead dummy’s remaining spade and discard a low diamond, forcing West to win the trick. A diamond return gives you a trick with the diamond king, while a spade exit lets you ruff in dummy and discard a second diamond from hand. Thus you will lose only two spades and a diamond, making the contract.

And what would happen if East had followed to the third spade? If he had followed small, you would still discard a diamond from hand to force West to win the trick. If East was clearly going to win the trick (say West had a 5-2-3-3 pattern), you ruff the spade and exit with a low diamond from hand. For the defense to stand a chance, East must win the trick and play a third diamond. Now you put up the king, succeeding whenever the diamond finesse succeeds or West wins the ace but has no diamonds left.

Notice that if you hadn’t ducked the first trick, East could have gained the lead in spades, whereupon the obvious diamond shift would scuttle the contract.

In action here against France in the McConnell Cup at the 2002 World Championships is the Netherlands Women's team, that only two months previously had won the European Championships.

Against three no-trump West, Marijke van der Pas, led the club nine, which promised the 10, but no higher honor. Declarer won in hand and played the spade 10, which was allowed to hold. Van der Pas won the spade continuation with the king and switched to the diamond seven, won by dummy’s ace. A third spade was taken by Bep Vriend’s ace, and van der Pas had to find a discard. In their methods, a lead of a low card promised a good suit, and that diamond seven was not particularly low, albeit the lowest she had available. So it was certainly possible that East would do the wrong thing unless helped out by an informative discard.

How to persuade partner to continue diamonds? She solved the conundrum by discarding her heart queen. This could not be a request for a heart return, but instead a warning to switch, with suit-preference overtones. Vriend read the situation perfectly and returned the only card to defeat the contract — the diamond 10. A low diamond would not have been good enough. Declarer would have ducked, and West, forced to win the trick, could not profitably continue the suit.

In the other room the unbeatable four-spade contract was reached, so the Netherlands registered a game swing.

The true expert pays proper attention to the spot cards, even when there is no obvious reason to preserve them. The idea that you will need to optimize communications and entries is an obvious one, but is often overlooked. Today's deal offers an example.

West leads the spade king against three no-trump. You win the second round of spades and see that you will need four hearts and four clubs to land the contract. How would you tackle the play?

When the cards lie as in the diagram, only one play is good enough. You must lead the club eight to dummy’s ace. The nine falls from East, and you take a successful heart finesse. You continue with the club seven to dummy’s king, noting with interest that East follows with the jack. How do you think the clubs lie after this fall of the cards?

East will produce two middle cards on the first two rounds when he holds J-10-9, J-10, J-9 or 10-9. So, the odds are approximately 3-1 in favor of East’s holding only two clubs. What is more, you are prepared for a finesse against West’s 10 after your thoughtful unblock of the eight and seven!

You take your second heart finesse and lead the club three to dummy’s six. You then play the club queen and finesse a third time in hearts. Contract made!

Today's deal was reported earlier this year in Le Bridgeur, Philippe Cronier's French language summary of the tournament world. The deal was played by Sylvie Willard, who, along with Benedicte Cronier, has played on all the successful French teams of the last six years.

Their partnership is unusual for its longevity and also — I’m sure not coincidentally — for the fact that both players are universally popular with their teammates and opponents. They are viewed as genuinely nice people and excellent players.

Sylvie demonstrated here that she could outplay her competitors; very few brought home this game by correct technique. She received a diamond lead against three no-trump and realized that her best chance to succeed was to take three heart tricks and four clubs.

In abstract the correct play is to hope East has the club queen (since you cannot negotiate four clubs to the queen with West) and you would start by playing the club ace to guard against a singleton club queen offside. But because of the awkward position with entries to dummy, Willard correctly led a club to the 10 successfully, unblocked the heart honors, then crossed to the club ace and advanced the heart jack. All was well when West won the trick. He could not attack diamonds, so had to play back a spade. Willard took the ace, cashed her heart winner, then finessed in clubs and conceded the rest.

Today's problem is a defensive one, so put yourself in the West seat. South is declarer in six no-trump after opening one no-trump. North showed five spades, then offered a choice of small slams with his jump to five no-trump, rejecting South's suggestion of diamonds as a place to play.

You, West, lead the club queen, which declarer wins in dummy and plays a spade to his jack. Plan the defense.

You know that partner has no points at all. If you win the spade ace, you can be sure that declarer will be able to test spades with impunity before examining his other chances. Since the spades do split, declarer will surely come to 12 tricks. However, just because YOU know spades split, does not mean declarer can be as confident of this!

If you refuse to win your spade ace on this round and the next (perhaps even throwing in an echo with your small cards just to try to persuade declarer that things are not going his way), South will not know that spades are breaking. He may decide to test diamonds first. When they fail to break, he will go back to spades (hoping that the spades break and that whoever has the ace was originally short in diamonds), but now you will be able to win your ace and cash a diamond trick for down one.

Ducking the spade is not sure to defeat the hand; winning it is sure to let the slam come home.

You never know when squirreling papers away will come in handy. In cleaning out my files, I came across a hand I'd cut out from a U.S. Daily Bulletin from the 1970s. Declarer was Robert Lebi of Canada, who has been a regular player on Canadian squads over the last 30 years.

The lead against four hearts was the club jack to East’s king. Next the club ace was cashed, and East now erred by playing a third club, allowing declarer to shorten his hand. Lebi earned a game swing for his team in this Spingold match by ruffing, playing a heart to the ace, and, believing his opponent’s king to be a true card, played for a trump reduction. He took the spade ace, then ruffed a spade. Now came the diamond ace and king, a diamond ruff, and a spade ruff. Declarer was down to the Q-10 of hearts and a master diamond while West held J-9-3 of hearts. The diamond jack completed the coup. West had to ruff and lead into the trump tenace to concede the contract.

The Levi team won their knockout match by less than the swing on this deal, when the other declarer did not ruff a spade when in dummy with the heart ace!

Note that if East shifts to the heart king or a diamond, declarer cannot get home. While the heart play could be expensive, a diamond will almost never cost, and as we have seen, it can gain by preventing declarer from shortening himself for the trump coup.

How good a contract is six spades here? You may be surprised to know that although the contract looks good, best play will result in only a 90 percent chance.

The instinctive line, however, will fail today. Imagine that you win the opening heart lead, draw trump, and play the club king and a club to the jack. East wins to return a club, and unless you follow an inspired line in the diamond suit, you will lose a trick to the diamond queen.

But you can do much better after the lead of the heart king to the ace. Take the spade ace and king, ruff dummy’s losing heart, then cash the club king and lead a low club, intending to cover West’s card. As the cards lie, when East takes the club eight with the nine, he can do no better than lead a low diamond. When the diamond nine forces the queen, declarer claims the rest.

In this variation, had the diamond nine been covered by the 10, declarer would cash his remaining trumps and discard a diamond from dummy. Then a club to the ace would reveal how that suit lay. If the clubs were 3-3, declarer could claim. If West had four clubs, then the diamond finesse would be a certainty as West could have no more than a singleton diamond. And if East had four clubs and had kept them all he would be down to one diamond, so it would be correct to play a diamond to the king.