aces on bridge

“Art hath an enemy called Ignorance.”

— Ben Jonson

When North opens one spade and hears a two-heart response, he has three possible continuations: He could raise to three hearts or four hearts, or he could make a splinter raise to four diamonds. Does this last route show extras? The combination of North having a dead minimum and the “wrong ” splinter — an ace or small card is much better than the king — persuades him to go low. South has no reason to continue over the four-heart call.

After West leads the club queen, it might seem that South has four quick black-suit losers. But declarer has a top diamond in hand to cope with the slow club losers. South wins the first trick with dummy’s club ace and unblocks dummy’s diamond king. He then gets back to his hand by way of the trump ace and cashes the diamond ace to discard one of dummy’s losing clubs.

The idea now is to make it possible for South to ruff his losing minor-suit cards in dummy. He trumps a diamond, then gives up a club, planning to ruff dummy’s remaining club with the heart king and draw trumps, conceding just two spade tricks.

If the defenders win the second club and play anything but a spade, that is precisely what declarer will do.

If, instead, East wins the club king and plays a spade to his partner’s king, for a spade back to the ace and a third spade, declarer will ruff high, then draw trumps ending in dummy, with the spade queen as a home for his last club loser.

ANSWER: Over one diamond, I would probably overcall one spade, but here it feels right to double two diamonds. Since this hand is likely worth no more than one call, I want to keep both majors in play. Doubling seems like the right way to do that.