William Lloyd Garrison, an abolitionist, journalist and social reformer who died in 1879, asked, "Are right and wrong convertible terms, dependent upon popular opinion?" For sure!

If you hear the word "convertible," you probably think of a car. But we have that word in bridge too. Look at the North hand. Your partner deals and opens one diamond, and West leaps annoyingly to four clubs. What would you do now?

With 13 high-card points, you must not pass. But you cannot raise diamonds with only three or introduce spades on a four-card suit. Your only option is to double.

Note that this is not purely for penalty. It shows what we call "convertible values." It says that you had too many points to pass, but nothing more descriptive available. How does the opener react?

He should pass with a balanced hand, going for as many undertricks as possible. But with a distributional hand, he should bid, confident that your hand will contain some useful goodies.

Here, South should jump to five (or six!) diamonds. Then, with decent trump support, the club ace and respectable spades, you can reasonably raise to six diamonds.

West leads the club king. How should the play go?

South has 12 winners: three spades, one heart, seven diamonds and one club. To ensure those tricks, he must be careful to play a low club from the dummy at trick one. Here, calling for the ace costs the contract. East ruffs, and declarer has an unavoidable heart loser. But playing a low club from the board at tricks one and two brings home the slam.

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