Today's deal has several points of interest. First, look at the auction: does North's pass of four hearts describe his hand? I'd say yes. The pass IS forcing, and I prefer to play double by North as suggesting some defense, with a pass implicitly weak.

South now has to guess whether to bid six spades at his second turn — not unreasonable since any working queen in the North hand gives slam good play — or to go low with a call of four spades. Even the pessimistic action is quite high enough today.

On the lead of the heart king South ruffs and plays the spade ace, discovering the bad break. Now he must be careful, since if he drives out the trump queen, the defenders can force him and he never scores a third club trick. If he plays ace, king and a third club, the defenders lead a fourth club and score a second trump winner. Playing three rounds of diamonds before clubs simply lets East win and lead hearts again, and declarer will be defeated.

The winning line at trick three is simple and elegant — but not easy to find at the table. Declarer must lead the club jack from hand, giving the defenders the awkward choice of winning and providing South with an entry to dummy for the trump finesse, or of ducking.

If West does play low, declarer can simply drive out the spade queen and has five trump tricks and five side-suit winners.

Today's deal comes from the U.S. trials of a couple of years ago, where two of the top pairs in the country, Bobby Levin and Steve Weinstein, lost today's battle but won the war, when their squad emerged victorious to represent USA in Veldhoven in 2011.

The auction may look confusing, but all the spade calls were artificial. Weinstein showed the majors, letting Brad Moss show clubs and a game-forcing hand. Now Fred Gitelman as North initially showed his spade stopper, then when South showed both minors and slam interest, his four-spade call was a cue-bid. After the double the four-no-trump bid suggested a hand better than a sign-off in five clubs, so Moss bid the club slam.

When Bobby Levin kicked off with the spade jack, Moss won the ace, knowing that he was likely to have to ruff a diamond in dummy. If East was going to follow to a round or two of diamonds, then trumps were going to break badly.

Accordingly, at trick two Moss crossed to hand in hearts, played a club to the nine, cashed the ace-king of diamonds, and played another diamond. That way Moss could ruff the fourth diamond in dummy without losing a trump. This approach would also have been required with a few specific layouts when West had as little as jack-third of trumps.

Not surprisingly, Moss was the only one of four declarers who brought home this slam. If you start with a top trump from hand, the bad trump break dooms you.

Today's deal is all about focusing on the possible things that can go wrong in your four-heart game. Some of them will doom you whatever you do; others will present you with a roadblock that you can hurdle. See which problems you think you can overcome. Of course, the points at issue are bad breaks in the red suits.

Against four hearts the defenders lead the two top spades and shift to the club nine. What now? If diamonds break or the jack falls singleton, you will have nothing to worry about but possible bad trump breaks. What can you do about bad diamond breaks? Not much if West has the shortage, but what if East is the one with short diamonds?

The answer is that a 4-1 diamond break will not be fatal — so long as you are careful. Win the club ace, play the diamond queen, then lead the diamond three toward the king.

If diamonds prove to be 3-2, draw three rounds of trump and hope they are no worse than 4-2. But when as here East has short diamonds, he cannot profitably ruff in, so he may as well pitch a spade.

You win the diamond king, cross to dummy with the heart ace, and lead another diamond. Again East discards, so you win the ace. Now you can ruff a diamond in dummy. Whether East overruffs with his trump trick or discards, you will lose only one trump trick and have 10 winners.

After North's routine pre-emptive raise to game, West cashes the heart king and then shifts to the club jack. Once East follows, how do you propose to make 10 tricks?

After taking the club jack with your ace, you draw trump in two rounds and ruff the heart queen in dummy. Then you cash the club queen and king, ending in the dummy. Now that both hearts and clubs have been eliminated, you lead a low diamond from dummy, intending to cover whichever card lower in rank than the king that East might play.

On the given layout, suppose that East follows with the diamond seven. When you cover this with the nine, West has to win the trick with the ace and your king is set up immediately. Also, it would not help East to play a diamond higher than the seven. If he plays the 10, this will be covered by the king and ace, leaving the jack and nine equals against the defenders’ queen. And, of course, the diamond queen from East would be even less effective.

On another layout West might win the first diamond with the 10. Then he can do nothing but play another diamond (allowing you to make the diamond king) or give you a ruff-and-discard. Thus you will make 10 tricks no matter how the diamond suit lies.

By contrast, if you had played a diamond to the king in today’s layout, West would take it and return a diamond, giving the defense four tricks.

In today's deal from a team game, South misjudged both the play and the result that would come through from the other table.

In four hearts on the lead of the diamond jack he put in dummy’s queen. East won the trick and astutely shifted to a spade at trick two. That set up the setting trick for the defenders.

At the scoring-up, when his teammates called out minus 620, South asked suspiciously if West had a led a spade to trick one, or if East had forgotten to shift to a spade at trick two after a diamond lead. East-West denied the charges, and South asked exasperatedly how game had been allowed to make.

Patiently West explained that their declarer had drawn the correct inference at trick one that West would not be leading from the K-J-10 of diamonds with what was surely a safer or equivalent holding in spades, his partner’s suit. Thus East had the diamond king and nothing else. So South found the imaginative play of ducking the first trick in dummy. If East also ducked this, declarer could establish a club as a discard for his spade loser at his leisure, and East could not overtake the lead without setting up the discard at once.

Note that if declarer plays the diamond ace from dummy at trick one, West can underlead in diamonds to East at his next turn, and the defense will still have time for the spade shift.

Today's deal features a small point of technique that might escape you until you see it in practice.

Against your grand slam in spades (yes, North should simply have shown his heart king over the five-no-trump inquiry) West leads the trump 10, and you count only 12 top winners even if hearts break. You therefore need to take one extra trick from a diamond ruff before you draw trump. You win the trump lead with the king, cross to the diamond ace, and ruff a diamond. You then draw trump, throwing a club from dummy. How best now to tackle the hearts for five tricks?

Just in case West holds four hearts to the jack, you should lead your heart 10 to dummy’s ace. When you continue with a low heart to the queen, East shows out. Because of your earlier unblock, the way is then clear for you to lead the heart four to dummy’s nine. You can then discard a diamond and club on dummy’s established hearts.

You can see what would happen if you had kept the heart 10 in your hand. When you led it on the third round, West would play low. With no side entry to dummy, you would then score three heart tricks instead of five.

(This same unblock would be necessary with five hearts to the A-K-8 facing Q-9-2. To protect against East’s having the bare jack or 10, you must unblock the nine on the first round of the suit.)

When you're a truly great player, even if you have a complete bidding misunderstanding and end up in a dreadful contract, you can still focus and play for your best chance. In today's deal Bob Hamman managed to bid himself to the less-than-optimum contract of six diamonds. (Let's blame his partner.)

West started with a low spade to dummy’s king, and Hamman ruffed away East’s ace. He then played a diamond to the king, a diamond to the jack, and the diamond ace: one hurdle negotiated successfully.

He then cashed three rounds of hearts and exited with a low club. East won his singleton jack, perforce, and now had to give dummy three spade tricks (one more than declarer needed at this stage).

Very nicely played, but can you see how the defenders could have scuppered his plan?

West had (or should have had) a count of the whole deal. He knew declarer had started with a void in spades, four hearts (his partner having played up the line to show an odd number), and five diamonds. Therefore, he had four clubs. He could not possibly have started with A-Q-J-x in clubs or he would have discarded one on the spade queen when he had the chance. Consequently, East must have the singleton club jack or queen. In either case, West should go in with the club king, crashing his partner’s honor, and return the 10, thus ensuring a fourth-round trick for himself in the suit.

David Gold, a regular on the England Open team, sat South in this deal at the Young Chelsea Bridge Club. This club has a good claim to be one of the strongest in the world. Duplicates take place every weekday and it would not be unusual to find half a dozen internationals playing on any evening.

After East opened two hearts to show at least five cards in the major together with an unspecified four-card minor, Gold became declarer in four spades.

West led the club king to dummy’s ace, as the club five appeared from East. It seemed likely that East’s second suit was diamonds, and if East also had the heart king, there would be four losers. The only suit likely to provide a discard was diamonds.

Gold cashed dummy’s top diamonds, then took the precaution of ruffing a third diamond high in hand as West discarded. The spade queen lost to East’s ace and back came the club 10, overtaken by West for a heart return, Gold taking his ace.

Now, aware that East held nine red cards and was likely to have three cards in clubs, both from East’s carding up the line and West’s silence in the auction, Gold placed East with the singleton trump ace.

Backing his judgment, he continued by finessing dummy’s spade seven, ruffed another diamond high, and now a trump to the jack allowed him to discard a heart on the established fifth diamond.