Cool hand by Zia Mahmood

Source: Around the World in 80 Hands  By Zia Mahmood, David Burn

All the best books on bridge, especially rubber bridge, have this piece of advice in common: if you want to be a winner, learn to accept your bad results with good humor. Especially if your partner is not a strong player, disasters are inevitable, and the sooner you accept them, the easier it is to prepare yourself mentally for the next hand. Imagine that you are playing for huge stakes at the Mayfair Club in New York.

You are North, playing with a so-called ‘expert’ partner — so called chiefly by himself. East is a good player, prone to flights of fancy, while West is your friend and everybody’s, Bob Hamman. Naturally, he is fresh from yet another World Championship victory (I wonder if it ever gets boring?) and he has just finished throwing magical dice to take your money at backgammon.

Your hand is nothing special, but there is pride at stake as well as a lot of cash.

 A 4 3 2  10 7 6  A K J 4 3  2

Vulnerable against not, you open 1, and the bidding starts slowly before going into orbit:

West	North	East	South
Hamman	Zia
	1	Pass	1
1	2	31	6
6	Dbl2	All Pass

1. Preemptive, in the modem style. 3 or 3 would be used to show value raises to 3.

2. Though you have first-round spade control, partner almost certainly has a void, so it would be risky to venture a forcing pass with such weak trump support. You have every reason to expect a juicy penalty as you double in even tempo. It is not done in the best cir-cles to draw your finger symbolically across your throat while making a double that you hope partner won’t remove!

You are wondering whether to lead the K or your singleton club, when you realize to your horror that the bidding is not over. Partner is thinking about bidding 7. Surely he can’t be… but he does! When this is passed round to Hamman, he doubles implacably, and you watch in a daze as your partner goes one down.

This is the full deal:

If my partner had passed 6 doubled, we would still be taking tricks today — I calculate the penalty at 1400 on best defense. Bearing in mind my opening remarks, you may care to guess at my reaction. Naturally, I did what I had to do. I jumped out of my chair with every intention of strangling the idiot opposite, but Bob Hamman managed to get in the way. Now, Bob is over six feet, and I don’t know what he weighs, but it’s a lot. When he gets in your way, it is best just to forget about where you were going. But I hope for the sake of South’s health that I don’t see him again for a while. There are times when being a winner is of secondary importance —vengeance is what matters!

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