Deal Of The Week: December 15, 2024

Holiday Doldrums!

May As Well Play Some Bridge

It's the holidays, and with less bridge to direct for a few weeks I have gone into lazy mode. Things on my to do list are piling up a bit, but I'm in no mood to tackle them. I need to visit the grocery store but one look outside tells me that the wind is still capable of blowing me off the SkyTrain platform on the way there or back. So, bridge against the computer and five deals in I get this as South:

Partner is dealer and opens 1♣ in a matchpoint tournament against a bunch of AI pairs from the JACK program.  With 19 points opposite a first seat opener I know we are in the slam zone right away, but there's no need to jump to 2♦, 1♦ is forcing enough and will get more information from partner.

West overcalls 1♠, partner bids 3♦ and East takes the opponents to 3♠. A recount shows that I still have 19 and it looks like this deck has at least 60 points in it.

What's really happening, of course, is that there is some distribution out there, but partner's jump to 3♦ seems to indicate that it's not us making the most of our short suits. I bid 4NT to find out about aces, as well as the trump suit since JACK knows how to play Roman Keycard Blackwood. The 5♥ response from partner shows two of the three missing keycards (A♠, A♣, and K♦) and denies the Q♦.

I'm about to settle into 6♦ when it occurs to me that this is matchpoints, and notrump may be better. The more I think about it, the more this seems right. Even if partner somehow has the A♠ and the A♣, ten diamonds missing the king-queen will be playable for one loser 75% of the time, failing only if West has both honours and two finesses fail. 6NT it is.

There are seven other tables in this tournament of computers (and me). Two of the computer pairs managed to bid all the way to 7♦ and made it, but 6NT was the second best score for 71% on the board.

The overtrick was irrelevant. I'm trying to convince myself that JACK is not smart enough to realize that as it chooses an opening lead. If so, we're all doomed to eternal defeat by our computer overlords eventually....