Espositori

You are in a hand where the dealer is on your left, so your partner has lead.  The other team has named hearts as trump, and the dealer picked up the .  Your hand is not so bad, you have two little hearts.  You can probably get at least one trick, maybe even set them if your partner has some cards.

Your partner leads the , and he hit the trump namer who follows suit with the .  The action is to you, and you have no clubs.  

You certainly don't want to trump your partner's ace.  Even if the dealer has no clubs, she'll just over-trump anything you can play with that she picked up.  Best to let your partner's ace walk here if possible.  You need to throw off.

Don't just pick any random non-trump card and play it.  Use this opportunity to adjust your hand and give your partner a message.  Play the .  Even though it is larger than either of your spades, it is still unlikely to take a trick.  By playing it here you do two things:  

1.  You short your hand of diamonds.  Now if diamonds are played you can play trump.  

2.  You have also given a signal to your partner, assuming he is alert enough to see that you have thrown off with a reasonably high card.   You have told your partner, "If you take this trick, I can be helpful if you lead diamonds on the next trick."

Hopefully his holds up and he has a diamond to lead back at you.