At the Cap Gemini tournament in 1998, the eventual winners, Zia Mahmood and Tony Forrester, had taken a big early lead and were still just in front when this board arrived at the table.

The pair in second place also reached three no-trump, and Tor Helness as East led the heart jack in response to his partner’s opening bid. Declarer won with the king and misguessed the clubs. Back came the heart nine, ducked all around, and that was followed by a diamond to the king. Now the defense was ahead in the race to establish a long suit, and the contract had to go one down

At the other key table, West led the diamond 10 to the king, and East unblocked the queen. Forrester as declarer naturally misguessed the clubs, cashing the ace and playing a club to the jack. He ducked the diamond continuation, throwing a heart from dummy, and that left East on play. That player made the natural-looking play of the spade queen (the winning defense is to switch to a heart), and Forrester put up the king.

He then cashed the diamond ace, discarding another heart, and took his winning clubs. East had to keep three hearts, so was forced down to two spades. Forrester was able to lead a spade, win the heart return with the ace, and exit with a further spade. He took the penultimate trick with the heart king and had an established spade for his ninth trick.

One of the pairs in contention for top honors at the Cap Gemini event from which all this week's deals come were Krzysztof Martens and Marek Szymanowski of Poland. Szymanowski, well-known to be both a fine card player and a very tricky opponent, produced an excellent false-card against Jason and Justin Hackett.

After Szymanowski had opened a Polish club with the East cards, an action that showed either a balanced weak no-trump or a variety of strong hands, Jason found himself in two no-trump as South, having shown strong no-trump values and a heart suit.

Without looking at the East-West cards, you should decide how to exploit the heart suit to best effect. It looks natural to play East for the heart king, but running the queen from dummy appears to lose out to his holding a singleton king. Try it and you will see that if that is the lie of the cards, West scores two heart tricks.

Jason Hackett tried something different. He won the spade lead and played a heart to the nine — and Szymanowski took this with the king! Then the defenders cleared the spades, and Jason, not unnaturally, repeated the finesse in hearts, allowing the defense a second heart trick.

Together with two spade winners and three diamond tricks, that meant two off. But note that if Marek takes the heart jack at trick two, declarer uses dummy’s spade entry to finesse East out of the heart king, and makes eight tricks in comfort.

In today's deal from the Cap Gemini tournament of a decade ago, both sides have fair play for slam, but 11 tricks are the limit on perfect defense.

At one table, Marinesa Letizia, on lead against six hearts doubled, underled the diamond ace. Lisa Berkowitz got the message, returning a high club for her partner to ruff. That was all the defense got — their result of plus-100 came out pretty close to par on the board. However it was a little unlucky for Letizia — had partner not turned up with that club honor, this play would have been necessary to beat the hand. It was even more unlucky in that declarer would possibly have gone down even more on a spade lead. (Unless declarer plays a diamond himself at trick two, the defenders collect at least 300.)

Incidentally, Larry Cohen as declarer did make this diamond play at trick two — protecting himself against the foul splits — to bring home five hearts doubled at another table.

By contrast, where Chemla and Perron were sitting East-West they were lucky enough to run into a North who could not or would not open his hand. They got to buy the hand in five spades doubled and received the lead of the club king.

Perron, West, ruffed and led a heart, won by North, who led another club. With one heart ruff established, Perron played safe for 11 tricks and a gain of 12 IMPs.

A typical auction on this deal from the Cap Gemini pairs a decade ago was for East to open a weak two-spades and for West to double South's bounce to five clubs, then lead the spade king. At trick two it was up to West to decide on a course of action.

The natural play is to shift to a top heart, which seems neutral enough — how can it be doing anything for declarer that he cannot do for himself? However, declarer ruffs the heart in hand and lays down the club ace, then ruffs a spade and ruffs a heart and goes to dummy with the club 10. Now the heart ace, followed by a heart ruff, has eliminated all the major suits. The diamond ace and a second diamond leaves West on play, forced to concede a ruff and discard, on which declarer’s last diamond loser is discarded. Most declarers duly found this play and recorded plus-550.

Notice that if West does not lead or shift to a heart, declarer cannot arrange to eliminate the major suits — the trump entries to dummy are insufficient. However, at only one of the eight tables did a defender spot the trap. Michel Perron led the spade king, and when Chemla contributed the nine, Perron carefully continued the suit to beat the contract.

As a side issue, should this be a suit-preference position for East? If so, should you use a middle card to ask for a continuation of the suit led?

Themistocles Papadopoulos, the favorite opponent of Victor Mollo's immortal Hideous Hog, was reputed to be the only man capable of false-carding with a singleton. Alas for a number of declarers in the Cap Gemini, there were several opponents who seemed equally capable of the feat!

Seven out of eight pairs reached six hearts here. The slam is laydown if trumps split; but when declarer laid down a top heart from the South hand, the nine appeared. Now the question is whether this card is a singleton or the standard “expert” false-card from J-9-x-x.

Larry Cohen at one table and Lisa Berkowitz at a second were the only declarers prepared to pay off to the possibility of a brilliancy by leading a second top trump from the South hand, and as a result they picked up a handsome swing for their sides. The rest of the field played for their opponents to be superstars by leading a small heart to the queen, and went down.

As the Hideous Hog said on another occasion, “Maybe if you didn’t try to be so clever, you wouldn’t end up looking so stupid.”

Notice that when the hand was declared by South, if declarer had crossed to dummy with a spade at trick three and led a heart up to the ace, he would have been much more likely to believe the heart nine to be a singleton. Apart from anything else, the deceptive play from J-9-x-x would not be a success if West had the bare heart 10!

In today's deal from the Cap Gemini, Paul Chemla of France would have been doubly irritated with himself for misguessing the location of a high card — and even more irritated when it turned out that he had a line of play that did not require the guess at all!

Three no-trump may be best for North-South, but four hearts looked fair enough on the lead of a top spade. This was particularly true because, after the opening lead, Chemla knew the location of both minor-suit aces.

After some thought, West shifted to the diamond six, and East put in the nine. Chemla won in hand, crossed to the heart king, and continued with the heart nine, thoughtfully covered by East. Now Chemla could draw trump, but in the process he erred by pitching all of dummy’s spades.

At this point a diamond to the jack, ducked, left Chemla having to find the club jack. That was because when East won the third diamond, he had a spade exit-card that declarer could not extract. Since West was known to hold four clubs, Chemla got it wrong by playing him for the jack.

The correct play is to leave one spade in dummy while drawing trump, throwing a club from dummy instead. Now you lead a second diamond to dummy after drawing trump. East must duck, you ruff a spade back to hand, and lead a third round of diamonds. East takes it, but is now endplayed to lead clubs in the three-card ending.

The Solomon Cup is a Philadelphia tournament that my wife (Judy Kay-Wolff, an ex Philadelphia resident and big-time Eagles fan) avidly follows. Today's deal, from this year's tournament, gave both declarer and the defenders the chance to shine.

The contract of three spades was a Goldilocks contract — two spades would have been too easy; four spades, too hard. West led the heart king and North, Corey Krantz, playing with Howie Cohen, took the trick, desperately needing to generate extra trump tricks. When he ducked a diamond, West won the queen and played the diamond ace and another diamond. Krantz ruffed with the queen and could draw trump in three rounds thanks to the location of the spade jack onside. On the third trump he pitched a club from the board.

He next led a low club from hand, and when West followed small (a play that I suspect many of us might have made without overdue reflection), declarer carefully inserted dummy’s eight and let East win the trick. That player had a choice of leading a club back into the tenace or leading out top hearts, when declarer would ruff and cross to dummy to pitch the club loser on the heart 10. So Krantz made his contract.

Note that had West put in the club 10, declarer is faced with a choice of losing options. If he finesses, then East wins and returns a club to set up the defenders’ fifth winner before declarer can establish a heart trick.

This spade game is from the Seniors' final of a recent Australian Teams event. You can hardly blame East for leading a top club to the second trick (a diamond shift is easier to find with the sight of all four hands), but that was all the help declarer needed.

Declarer ruffed the second club and drew three rounds of trump with the king, ace and queen, taking care to preserve the trump five in dummy and the trump four in hand.

Now he played the heart king, West taking the trick and returning a heart. Declarer won and cashed the three heart winners to produce a four-card ending with three diamonds and a trump in each hand, while West was down to his four diamonds and East had the doubleton diamond nine and two irrelevant clubs.

The diamond king seemed to be marked in West, so declarer went for his one remaining chance, a one-suit squeeze. Does that sound impossible? Well, watch what happens when declarer leads a spade to dummy’s five. If West pitches his low diamond, declarer will duck a diamond to West and endplay him. If West pitches the diamond 10 or jack, declarer leads a diamond toward the seven, planning to cover East’s card. If East plays the five, South puts in the seven; if East plays the nine, South covers with the queen. Either way, South’s spots are just good enough to take the last two tricks.

This position works only when East has no diamond higher than the nine.

Today's deal raises the question of whether South was extremely lucky or unlucky. You decide!

South (who reported this deal from a national event with profuse apologies to his teammates) took an unjustifiably cautious view after a limited opening and rebid by North and missed the excellent grand slam in hearts. He won the club lead, crossed to the diamond ace, and played a top heart, to find the tremendous news of the bad trump break.

All that remained was to cross to the spade ace and ditch his diamond loser on the club king. Alas for South, East was able to ruff the first spade and cash a diamond for down one.

The probability of two suits breaking 5-0 meant that declarer had around 999 chances in 1000 of making his contract. But could South plead bad luck? No, the moral of the tale is that even when you spot a 99.9 percent chance for your contract, you should still look for something better.

The correct way to cross to hand is by ruffing a club at trick two. This line only fails if West has led a singleton club and East is void in spades or diamonds.

Of course, any gain for South would have been undeserved so perhaps South was just being magnanimous to go down in six hearts. The really unfortunate declarers were those who played seven no-trump, where the bad break and the poor communications meant that the grand slam had to go four off.