Zia's tips
Susanna Gross
THE GREAT Pakistani player Zia Mah- mood is always giving me bridge tips — but sometimes I'm not sure whether he's pulling my leg or not. One of his tips is to double the opponents whenever they bid 1NT-2NT-3NT. I've tried this out a few times, but it has backfired as often as not. When my partners ask me what on earth I was doing doubling, I feel it's too feeble to say 'Zia told me to', so I mumble some flimsy excuse.
Another bid Zia swears by is what he calls the 'Paid Pique'. This means that if you're sitting in third position and there are two passes to you, you should open a spade without looking at your hand. Zia has made me promise to try this out, so playing social bridge the other day, I did just that. It turned out I had more of a 24 opening, but at least spades really were my suit: Dealer North Neither Side Vulnerable # K 9 6 The 4K was led. How would you play the hand? I'm afraid I took an inferior line: I won the +A, drew two trumps and then played my top three diamonds: if neither defender ruffed, I planned to cross to dummy's last trump and cash the *J. But West did ruff, and later I lost a heart, too.
I made my mistake at trick one: I should have ducked the club lead. On winning the club continuation, I should have discarded a diamond from hand. Next I should have cashed two rounds of trumps and two dia- monds. A third trump to dummy would have drawn West's last trump, and dummy's 410 would have provided a parking space for two heart discards. It's all very well play- ing the Paki Pique, but it would help if I could play like the man who invented it.
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