ACES ON BRIDGE

Books must follow sciences and not sciences books. — Francis Bacon

Today, we see an expert following a textbook play. Alas for him, he had failed to realize that it is sometimes necessary to set aside the manuals when other issues demand it. Fortunately for our hero, the defense were also on autopilot, not using their imagination sufficiently to generate extra trump tricks for themselves, which is the theme of this week’s deals.

Four hearts was the normal contract on this board, and Zia Mahmood and Norberto Bocchi reached it straightforwardly. West led the diamond king, which went to the six, three and seven (a routine falsecard from Zia). West now understandably, but perhaps a trifle unimaginatively, continued with a second diamond, which Zia won and crossed to hand twice in clubs to take two finesses in hearts, making the routine 10 tricks for an above-average score.

Unremarkable, you may say. Yes, but Zia had given the defense a chance when he ducked the first diamond, a play that was unlikely to gain him anything.

Similarly, West might have reasoned that if declarer had two diamonds, continuing the suit would achieve nothing, while even if he had three diamonds, there could be no entries back to the West hand to reach the defense’s second trick in that suit. If West had shifted to a spade at trick two, the defense could lead that suit at every opportunity to arrange a trump promotion for the heart queen that Zia would have been unable to stop.

ANSWER: Since you limited your hand at your first turn to be in the range 0-9 high-card points, your partner’s double suggests real extras. In that context, because of your first two calls, you have a pretty decent hand, and the best way to show it is to jump to three spades. Partner will infer that you have five spades and about 6 or 7 points.