Pakistan's Zia Mahmood, one of the world's top players, is especially noted for his ability to guess the location of missing key cards.
In this deal from the 1984 World Team Olympiad, Zia demonstrated that there is often more to a successful "guess" than first meets the eye.
Zia got to four hearts as shown, and West started with the K-A-Q of spades, dummy ruffing the third spade with the heart four. Zia could see that a successful trump finesse would greatly aid his cause, and he also realized that West did not have to have the queen of hearts for his opening bid.
Nevertheless, at trick four Zia crossed to the club queen, led a low heart and finessed the ten. The heart ace was followed by a club to the ace and the heart king, felling West's queen. Although the diamond finesse later failed, South still finished with 10 tricks — four hearts, four clubs, the diamond ace and a spade ruff in dummy.
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How did Zia know West had the heart queen? The answer is that he didn't, but he had good reasons for playing as he did.
First, West's spade continuation at trick three, forcing dummy to ruff, made it seem that he was trying to protect a potential trump trick.
Second, finessing against West was the better technical play. It would bring in the entire suit if West had started with Q-x or Q-x-x, while a finesse against East would pick up the suit only if he had started with Q-x-x.
Third, if the finesse lost to East, West would then become marked with the diamond king for his opening bid, giving declarer his contract with the aid of a diamond finesse later on.
And so, a lot more thought went into Zia's successful "guess" than might appear at first glance, which is usually the case when a player of his caliber "guesses" correctly.
