Bridge

No report of the goings-on at a National tournament is ever complete without seeing the incomparable Zia Mahmood at work. Here he is from the finals of the Spingold tournament, sniffing out a problem and finding an ingenious way to pull the wool over his opponents’ eyes.

Both tables reached four hearts after the North players had responded two clubs, a conventional variation of Drury to show a maximum pass with trump support. Both defenders led a top spade and continued with a low spade when their partners encouraged. Both Easts won the spade ace and thoughtfully played a third spade to try to force declarer, and both Souths carefully took the ruff in hand to preserve dummy’s trump honors.

Now the paths diverged. In one room the unsuccessful declarer drew two rounds of trump to find the bad news, then led a club to his king and West’s ace. Now a fourth spade doomed him, whichever hand he ruffed it in.

Zia, ever the psychologist, foresaw that the 4-1 trump break was likely, given the defense so far, so opted for the more devious route of leading a club to dummy’s queen at trick four. His hope was that West would not be able to see the big picture and therefore would not rise with his ace. So it proved: When West (perhaps sleepily following the dictum of “second hand plays low”) ducked his club ace, declarer had stolen the game-going trick and could simply draw trumps and claim 10 tricks once diamonds behaved.

Bid with the aces

South holds:

Answer: Double. You should hate to sell out to these low-level auctions when the opponents have suggested a fit. Yes, you could be walking into trouble, but you have to try to compete when you have shortage in the opponents’ suit.