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The Aces On Bridge by Bobby Wolff
Opening Lead: ♠J
humiliation of losing to a machine would never befall a top-class bridge player, would it? Playing bridge had previously seemed to be an insurmountable task for artificial intelligence. Until a decade ago, no program had proved capable of offering more than mediocre opposition to a decent player. But things may be about to change. Onno Eskes of the Netherlands has written in IMP magazine about how in the right circumstances computers can defeat humans. Over the next few months, I will be running some deals that reflect their strengths.
In seven diamonds (reached after West had shown the majors and a weak hand), two expert Dutch declarers went wrong. They won the spade lead and led a diamond to the ace, West discarding a spade. With hearts not breaking, declarer could not take advantage of the favorable lie of the clubs and went one down — for a flat board.
Eskes decided to present the hand to GIB, a bridge program developed by Matt Ginsberg, which can process the information about West’s hand plus the opening lead.
After 30 seconds it produced the spade ace, then, after a pause, it played the club ace. The computer discarded the spade queen and ruffed a small club in hand. Next came the diamond ace (discovering the bad trump split), a diamond to the queen, the two top clubs and the master club six. East ruffed, South overruffed, and he could now draw the last trump and ruff his last heart in dummy.
Bid with the aces
Answer: 2NT
You are worth a second call, but the danger of bidding three clubs is obvious; no one likes playing in a 5-1 fit. The way to get spades into play would be to double. By contrast, a call of two no-trump is not natural but shows minors, with longer clubs of course. Your sequence suggests this precise pattern, plus extras.
This Hand of the Day was originally published on aces.bridgeblogging.com.
You can now play the hand of the day on BBO+ and compare how you get on with the players in the article.