Nail Life Master Pairs

The two-day Nail Life Master Pairs was won here on Saturday night by Zia Mahmood of New York City and Chip Martel of Davis, Calif. They finished more than one-and-two-thirds boards ahead of Cecilia Rimstedt from Sweden and Meike Wortel from the Netherlands. Third were Joao Paulo Campos and Miguel Villas-Boas from Brazil.

The Smith Women’s Pairs was captured by Victoria Gromova and Tatiana Ponomareva from Russia, who were just over one board ahead of Migry Zur Campanile of New York City and Miriam Varenne from Switzerland. Third were Lisa Berkowitz and Sally Strul of Boca Raton, Fla.

Zia and Martel were only 30th after the first day but had two closing sessions of 67 and 60 percent to move ahead of the field of 182 pairs. This is their second Life Master Pairs title together; Martel’s 30th national championship and Zia’s 24th.

Overtricks can be so important in pair events. The diagramed deal was Board 2 in the last session (rotated to make South the declarer).

After a natural auction (East’s redouble was aggressive), Zia was in one no-trump.

West led the heart three, which South knew was lowest from a five-card suit.

Declarer took East’s jack with his ace and ran the club ten, West discarding a diamond.

To hold South to seven tricks, East had to take this trick and shift to the spade jack (or king), but he returned his last heart. Declarer won with dummy’s king, led a diamond to his king and played a diamond to the jack and ace.

Now East led the spade jack, but it was too late. Declarer won with his queen, played a diamond to dummy’s queen, returned a spade to his ace and ran the club nine.

East won with his queen and cashed two spade winners, but at Trick 12 had to lead away from the king-two of clubs into dummy’s ace-seven.

Plus 120 was worth 69.5 matchpoints out of 90. Plus 90 would have scored only 29.5 matchpoints, a difference of nearly half a board.