“The humblest citizen in all the land, when clad in the armor of a righteous cause, is stronger than all the hosts of error.”

Sometimes the knee-jerk reaction to cover the card led can be a mistake. Take this deal, in which South played in four hearts after West had overcalled in spades. When West tabled his singleton diamond 10, South reached automatically for dummy’s jack. Everybody covered, and South wasted no time in drawing trumps. Then he played a second diamond, grimacing when West showed out. All would have been well for declarer had East shifted to a spade now, but that player saw that the most likely way to set the hand would be to take one spade trick and one club trick, plus his two diamond winners. So he accurately switched to a club, and West was now sure to score his club king and spade ace to set the game.

Do you see the point of the deal? If South ducks in both hands at trick one, West remains on lead. Now

South will have no trouble setting up dummy’s fifth diamond as a discard for his losing club while keeping East off lead until it is too late for the club shift to hurt.

The other attraction in ducking the diamond 10 is that you get to find out if diamonds are breaking. If East produces the eight, you know diamonds are 3-1; if he overtakes the 10, diamonds must be 2-2. While that particular piece of knowledge might not be critical on this deal, one can imagine other deals in which declarer’s strategy (perhaps in terms of whether to take a safety play or not) might be affected by knowing how many diamonds he will have to lose.