BRIDGE

The card gods must be sorely disappointed when they deliver unexpected, maybe even undeserved, treasures to a particular player only to have those riches wasted in terrible ways.

South likely felt totally justified in making his fivelevel intervention: a sevencard suit of some quality and only two outside losers were surely enough to bid on.

Of course, West’s penalty double caused some doubt to creep in but when dummy arrived with the spade King and heart ace to cover the outside losers, South got that warm,rosy feeling often experienced by declarers who sense they are about to come home with a high-level doubled contract.

Fortune does seem to favour the bold, right South?

But the next warm feeling South experienced was of an entirely different sort as he won the heart ace and called for a club while anticipating an early claim.

Whoops!

West’s club holding that the defender had expected to be worth three tricks in the bidding had been diminished to two with the doubleton ten arriving in dummy but had gone back up to three with South’s ultra-careless approach to broaching the trump suit.

Heart ace, spade to the ace for a low club towards dummy’s guarded ten to exploit the information available from West’s revealing double: maybe a slower route to eleven winners than South’s pell-mell rush to defeat but considerably more rewarding.

And more deserving of any continued beneficence the card gods might deign to deliver.