TODAY’S spade game from the ACBL Fall Championships would be a duck-soup dummy-play problem at party bridge or IMPs. South takes the ace of diamonds, ruffs a diamond and leads a trump. East wins and shifts to clubs, and declarer takes the ace, leads a trump to dummy, ruffs the last diamond and exits with a club. After the defenders take two clubs, they must lead a heart, guessing the queen for South, or yield a ruff-sluff. Making four.

But the deal actually arose in the prestigious Blue Ribbon Pairs, where the goal is to outscore other pairs who hold your cards. North-South can’t settle for 620 points when a higher score is possible.

When Joanna Stansby was declarer at four spades, she let West’s king of diamonds win! It was a risky play: If West shifted to a black suit, declarer would have to guess the queen of hearts to avoid going down at a cold contract. But West couldn’t believe declarer had a singleton diamond; he led a second diamond.

Stansby threw a club on the jack and later threw another on the ace. She guessed the queen of hearts for an overtrick, plus 650 points.

At another table, North-South were Italians Fulvio Fantoni-Claudio Nunes, who ended up winning the event. When Nunes opened one spade, West jumped to three diamonds, and Fantoni . . . bid 3NT, suppressing his spade fit. All passed, and East led a diamond. Fantoni captured West’s queen, forced out the ace of spades, won East’s club shift, ran the spades and guessed right in hearts for plus 630.