“I’ll have them fly to India for gold, Ransack the ocean for orient pearl.” – Christopher Marlowe

As a defender, rising with an honor from a doubleton holding is, I believe, counterintuitive. But the more experience you get, the easier it becomes, so where better to look for the benefit of contributing the top honor from K-10 than the semifinals of a world championship.

Patrick Soulet of France led a spade versus the ambitious slam contract of Italian Giorgio Belladonna. Declarer had reached a poor spot, but the highly favorable lie of the hearts actually gave him chances for his slam. Indeed, at all the other three tables in play, the declarers made 12 tricks in hearts. After a spade lead dummy’s ace passed the heart nine to the 10, jack and queen. On regaining the lead, they drew one more round of trumps and then ruffed a club in dummy. Now they were able to re-enter hand with a diamond ruff and claim 12 tricks.

By contrast, Michel Lebel for France (today’s East) flew up with the heart king on the first round of the suit – curtains for declarer! You can see the bind Belladonna was put in. If he ducked, he was down at once. If he won the trick and tried to ruff a club before playing trumps again, then Lebel would overruff dummy on the third round. If he went to dummy and played a second trump himself, then Soulet would draw a third round of trumps to kill the club ruff.

Bid with the aces

South holds:

Answer: Raise to two spades. You have a far more useful hand in spades than the typical balanced hand with 12-14 points.

The only way you can show it is to raise spades directly, which is more than acceptable with three good trumps and a semibalanced hand.

If partner had responded one heart, you would bid one no-trump now, of course.