Deborah Smith (Fizzcat on BBO) won the WBF Women's Autumn Festival 2022. We caught up with her to find out more.

Could you tell us a bit about yourself?

I’m Deb Smith, and used to be Deb Moir.  I live in the Hawke’s Bay area of New Zealand, a great climate and produces excellent wine, with my husband (also a bridge player, Scott “2Smiths”) and my two kids (11 and 13).  At the moment my younger one has learnt to play bridge, but my older one seems much more interested in any game that involves his laptop and wifi.  We moved here to escape the “big” (it’s all relative) city of Auckland when our kids were starting school.

How long have you been playing bridge and when did you start playing? 

I started playing bridge when I was 18 when I attended lessons at the local club with my sister.  My grandparent’s played and they were our introduction to the game.  I first played for New Zealand in 1994.  My husband was in that team too, but we were just team-mates then.  I moved to Australia a couple of years later.  It was meant to be a stop-over on the way to Japan, but I ended up staying there and playing bridge professionally for a few years (among other things), where I represented Australia in zonal and world championships as a member of their women’s team.  It was loads of fun, and I met and became friends with a lot of interesting people.  During that time I saw my husband at bridge events where he was representing NZ.  After a bit of to and fro in the auction the play began.  It was fun, dating in cool places like Singapore and Paris, as well as closer to home.  Out team-mates didn’t seem to mind.  He and I seldom play as partners, a rule we broke to win the NZ Pairs together; but we're often team-mates.

Most of the games in the festival are robot individuals, but there are pairs games too. You often play with a robot partner in these - what do you like the most about playing with robots? 

I like the format of the Women's Festival.  While some of the key events to play in are at difficult times of the day for me, I like the ability to partner robots as they make it easy to organise and make late decisions about which events to play or skip.  The “best results” structure seems to work well.

Playing with robots means there is much less waiting around.  I tend to play quicker than many players, and that lets me duck in, play my 10 boards, and then get on with life (or trying to get some sleep).  The robots do the odd strange thing, but then so do people. 

Do you have any tips for players who haven’t played with robots before? 

I find the robots are probably more predictable than random partners, and I enjoy it more because of that.  They are conservative, so if your declarer play is up for it you need to bid a bit more aggressively than you might otherwise (seems to come naturally for me anyway according to most of my face to face partners).

How do you feel about your win and what was your strategy? 

I was very stoked to win the Women's Festival.  It's a fun but draining week.  I’m lucky to have a husband who plays and the kids are used to me playing so they put up with me being a zombie for the week, and even pandered to me as best they could.  In terms of the Women's Festival, it is important to get the “72”.  Two of those were are good times for me in this iteration of the event 3pm and 7pm, and I think that made a big difference for me.  It was great to see people from all over the world playing and enjoying themselves.  I only met one who insisted on giving me “useful” advice about what I should have bid and played – that reminded me of another good thing about robots. Table manners matter to me greatly and being online is no excuse. The good thing is that those people are few and far between, and you see them occasionally in face to face as well.

What’s your favorite game on BBO?

I usually play the daily tournaments, when I can.  They are fun.  I also enjoy the total point hands as I’m a bit of a gambler at heart.

Do you play face to face bridge? 

I play the occasional local tournament, mostly to spend time with friends.  I used to play a lot of tournaments (seldom at the club), but since our kids joined us, bridge has taken a back seat.  There will be more time for bridge later.

What other hobbies do you enjoy? 

I like reading, South Korean dramas on Netflix (Squid games opened up a rabbit hole of other shows to watch and I really like their style and sense of humour), my cats, board games, but most of all, anything to do with my family.