To be a killer bridge player, you need to be aggressive. Many of us are hampered by timidity, especially when it comes to making penalty doubles. All too often, we ignore our instinct to reach for the red card: we dwell on how foolish we’ll look if we’re wrong, and how cross our partner will be. But as Zia Mahmood says: ‘If every contract you double goes down, you’re not doubling enough.’
Zia routinely doubles auctions where the opponents have bid hesitatingly to game. As he sees it, if they’ve both limited their hands, you’re in with a good chance. Moreover, by upping the ante, the added pressure on declarer may cloud his thinking. This hand from a recent rubber bridge game seems to prove his point. West made a crazy gambling double (had he been drinking?), but it did manage to completely stupefy South, who is normally an excellent declarer:
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