To play one suit, learn about another

Jason Fried, the founder and CEO of Basecamp (formerly known as 37signals), said, "Make decisions when you have a lot of information to make the decision. Not when you have to guess about what the decision is going to be or use data that doesn't exist yet."

We are looking at the Rule of Seven, which tells a no-trump declarer how long to hold up his only stopper in the suit that the opponents have led. In today's deal, North and South have six spades. Subtracting six from seven tells South to hold up his spade ace at trick one, but to take the second trick. However, is that the right play here?

When you open in no-trump, do not worry - too much! - about an unstopped suit. Here, if South opens one club and West passes (let us assume), North would respond one diamond. What would South do next? He would have no accurate rebid.