Contract Bridge

The exploits of Pakistan’s Zia Mahmood have been chronicled in this space many times, and today’s hand provides still another example. It occurred in an early qualifying match between the U.S. I and U.S. II teams at the 2007 Bermuda Bowl.

The bidding shown took place when Michael Rosenberg and Zia held the NorthSouth cards. When the deal was played in only five diamonds at the other table, the declarer, Eric Rodwell, won the spade lead with the ace, led a trump to his ace and ruffed his last spade in dummy. He then tried to cash the ace of clubs, but West ruffed and led a third spade.

Rodwell ruffed, drew trump and ran his remaining diamonds, forcing East to come down to three hearts and a high club. Rodwell then threw East in with a club and guessed to play the nine on East’s low heart return, picking up West’s queen to just make five diamonds.

When Zia was declarer at six diamonds, he eyed West’s lead of the spade three — from a known six- or sevencard suit — with suspicion, and concluded that West was trying to direct his partner to give him a club ruff if he gained the lead at trick one. So, following his judgment, Zia won the spade ace and returned a low heart toward his J-9-4!

After East followed low, Zia inserted the nine, reasoning that East would surely have gone up with the queen — if he had it — and returned a club. West took the nine with the queen and continued with a heart, but Zia was now in full control.

He won the heart with the jack, ruffed his remaining spade, drew trump and discarded his club loser on one of dummy’s top hearts. Making the slam yielded a 770-point gain (13 IMPs) for Zia’s team, which went on to finish second to Norway for the world title.