Deals from actual play are somehow more satisfying than constructed deals. No one has rung a bell to let the player know that the critical moment has come and that he must focus on the problem at hand before it is too late.

The deal came up on OK Bridge and the auction shown was typical. After South took a punt at three no-trump, the defenders led a heart to the ace and returned the heart eight to West’s jack. West saw that the missing hearts were the nine and queen, and since East would have returned the nine had he been left with the 9-8 at trick two, South must logically hold both of those cards. A shift was logically called for, and West had the choice of playing his partner for the club ace or any two spade honors. Most guessed well by playing a spade. (On a club shift declarer would be likely to succeed by ducking the trick.)

But at our featured table, declarer, Tim Bourke, could see this scenario about to present itself to West. To prevent him from finding the winning play, Tim cold-bloodedly sacrificed the heart nine under East’s eight at trick two!

Now there were no inferences available about the small hearts. From West’s perspective he needed to cash the hearts immediately or declarer might be able to scamper home with nine tricks. (Give declarer any one of East’s black-suit honors, and that would be true.) So he cashed the heart king and set up Tim’s ninth winner for him.

After South's strong no-trump, West came in with two hearts and North showed four spades and no heart stop by cue-bidding three hearts. (Had he held a heart stopper and four spades, a convention called Lebensohl would have let him bid two no-trump as a puppet to three clubs, then cue-bid three hearts.)

The final contract of three no-trump was predictable enough, and West equally predictably led a top heart.

Before you play to the first trick, it is always a good idea to count your winners and decide where you need to set up tricks and who is the danger hand. A cursory count of potential winners should come to eight. If clubs split, you have nine tricks, so you need to allow for the likelihood that they will not break.

The secret here is that the hearts are useless to you, and the diamond king is worth nothing if the ace is onside. If that is so, West will have heart winners galore, ready to cash. So you must hope the diamond ace is offside!

Win the heart lead for fear of the diamond shift, unblock your spade honors, then cross to a top club and cash the spade jack. Now take your club winners, ending in dummy. If the fourth club is not a winner, exit with the club loser and wait for East to lead a diamond. With any luck, the diamond ace will be offside, and East will be endplayed to lead around to dummy’s diamond king.

I freely admit that when given today's deal as a problem, I started out well but missed one of the subtleties of the play. So see if you can "Stump the Swami" and do better than me!

Having been given the warning in four spades that trumps will not be splitting (what else could West’s double signify?). you win the diamond ace at trick one and ruff a diamond to hand. What next? Best is to exploit the possibility of finding the club king onside — but you do not want to lead the club ace and a second club, or East might win (as here)and play a third club. So you lead a low club to the queen and king. Back comes a heart, and you win in hand and lead a trump to the board, intending to insert the seven. West must contribute the eight, and you win the ace, finding the bad news, then take the remaining top hearts, in case you need to ruff the fourth heart in dummy, finding the suit to be 3-3.

Now you cash the club ace and can be sure West started with a 5-3-3-2 pattern. You lead out the fourth heart to force West to ruff high and return a diamond, which lets you ruff in hand and lead a spade toward the seven. Again, West must win the trick with a high trump, but now he will have to lead away from his Q-5 of spades in the two-card ending.

In today's deal North's initial two-club response persuaded South to try the club grand slam, expecting there to be a 4-4 fit and the chance of a discard if necessary. However, the three-card club suit in dummy was a big disappointment. How would you set about playing the grand slam?

I have the greatest confidence in my readership, but I suspect few players would find the winning line here. While 12 tricks are easy enough, near misses do not count for much except in the case of horseshoes and hand grenades.

The simplest line is to play for clubs to be 3-3. Draw trumps and run the winners with some very small extra chances if the clubs do not break. But you can do much better.

Win the the heart king with the ace, play the spade ace, and lead a spade to the nine. Then ruff a heart, play a club to the ace, and ruff another heart. Next play a diamond to the ace, ruff another heart, play a diamond to the king, and ruff a diamond. Then go back to dummy with the club king to draw the last trump and take trick 13 with the club queen.

In total you scored four ruffs in hand, three trump tricks in dummy, and six winners in the plain suits. This is a perfect and extended dummy reversal whereby you used dummy’s three-card suit to draw trump, and your long trump in hand for ruffing purposes.

How would you play today's contract of six clubs after receiving a heart lead? It looks natural to play for a diamond ruff in dummy, and indeed that is the right approach. But there are some formalities to be observed if you are to give yourself the absolutely best chance.

When the deal came up, David Smith of Australia was at the helm, after an auction in which South’s delayed jump to five clubs suggested solid clubs together with some extra values on the side. After winning the heart ace, he made the careful move of ruffing a heart in hand in to protect himself against the somewhat unlikely but by no means impossible bad break in clubs. Now came a diamond to the king and a heart ruff, the diamond ace and a diamond ruff, then the spade ace and a spade ruff as East pitched a heart.

At this point in the deal declarer had cashed four winners and taken three ruffs in hand and one in dummy, to reduce to a five-card ending. Smith now cashed two top trumps, ready to claim if they split. When they did not, he simply exited with his losing diamond and could claim the last two tricks whichever defender won the trick since he had the Q-10 of clubs poised over East’s guarded jack of trumps.

(Declarer has some flexibility in the timing, but must use his entries to dummy to ruff three times, to reduce his trump holding to East’s length for the trump coup.)

Howard Cohen of London is a fount of amusing bridge stories, generally told against himself. Here is one of his recent coups,- resulting as usual in a severe blow to both his pride and pocketbook. If you want to test yourself, cover the East and West cards before reading the commentary.

Against three no-trump West led and continued hearts. Declarer won the second trick and set about finding out what he could before making his final decision on the location of the diamond queen. Three rounds of spades suggested that West had started with four or five spades, while it seemed East had started with five hearts and West just three.

South’s inclination was to play West for the diamond queen because he knew East had at least eight cards in the majors while West had at most eight. But, before he made the diamond play, there was one last thing he could try … so he cashed the club ace.

When East’s king dropped, declarer was now sure East held at least three diamonds. So he cashed the diamond ace and played a diamond to his 10. This lost to West’s queen and declarer went three down!

It is time to tell you where Cohen was sitting. He was South and the East who had made the fine play of dropping the club king from an original doubleton was Graham Orsmond. What was worse, Howard had not thought to cash the club queen to confirm the club position!

Today's deal, reported by Paul Marston of Australia, occurred in his duplicate bridge club. Before I tell you what happened, look at the full deal to see if you can work out the point of the hand.

What generally happened was that South took his life into his hands by coming in at the two-level, and North had enough respect for the vulnerability to drive to game directly — well judged in a sense. On the lead of the spade king against four hearts, South took dummy’s ace and tried to draw trump in three rounds, ending in dummy. He was unable to accomplish that, and had little choice now but to try to lead a spade to the 10. Operation successful – patient died! West ruffed and got off play with a minor, leaving South with a loser in each of the side-suits — down one.

Even after the helpful spade lead there is only one very challenging path to success — one that nobody in Marston’s club could find (and, I’m willing to bet, not too many of my readers either!). You must duck the opening lead, win the shift, then draw trump in four rounds, cross to the spade ace and take the marked spade finesse for the contract. It is an optical illusion that ducking the spade costs a trick. No matter how the cards lie, you rate to lose a spade trick; the objective of the deal is not to lose two.

In baseball they say that if you give the opposing side a fourth out, you will get punished, but in today's deal, South did not take advantage of his extra life.

When West led a club against the heart game, declarer saw nothing better than the 75 percent line of winning: drawing trump, then leading diamonds toward the queen and jack twice. When both the ace and king turned up offside, declarer went one down and blamed the lie of the cards rather than his own carelessness. Can you see what he might have done better?

It was lucky for declarer that West did not lead a diamond, but once South had caught a break at trick one, he should have looked to improve on the line he actually followed. The key is the discard available from dummy on the top spades. It does no good to discard a diamond from dummy — that still leaves you with the same problem in diamonds. Instead, win the club lead and draw trump in two rounds, then cash the three top spades and make the apparently irrelevant discard of a club from dummy. The point is that you can now exit with a club. Even if West wins and shifts to a low diamond, you can simply cover with the jack. This endplays East into returning a diamond or giving you a ruff-sluff.

The approach of eliminating the side-suits when you have spare trump in each hand pays dividends surprisingly often.