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Silence is golden. There is no area of bridge where this maxim is more pertinent than in the doubling of a slam contract. There's so little to be gained by a double that it should be reserved only for hands where the certainty of defeat is virtually 100 percent.

West's one-word speech in this deal allowed declarer to make a slam that surely would have failed had West remained silent throughout.

South took the club lead with the ace and, with all the aces and kings in plain view, concluded that West's double had to be based on his trump holding. He therefore led a low trump toward dummy at trick two, and West played the 10 to protect his two trump tricks. When East's nine appeared, South felt confident that West had all the missing trumps.

Since the slam could now be salvaged only by a trump endplay, declarer temporarily abandoned further trump leads. Instead, he cashed the K-A of hearts and ruffed the nine in dummy.

Next came the Q-K-A of diamonds, South ruffing the ace to reduce his trump length. Declarer then played the K-Q of clubs, discarding the queen of hearts, to produce this position:

Dummy's trump eight was next led and ducked. West took his jack but had to return a spade from the Q-6 to South's A-7. So declarer made the slam and scored 1,860 points instead of going minus 100.

That West could have defeated the contract by playing the six of trumps at trick two is irrelevant. He just should have kept his big mouth tightly shut.