Lessons from Robots: Never give up

    By Rowen Bell, Oak Park IL

I'm not really playing any bridge these days, but I will occasionally play "robot individuals" on Bridge Base Online (BBO). In these games, your partner and opponents are computer "robots" that are programmed to play a fairly basic bidding system.

I had a very odd hand come up tonight that I wanted to share. In first chair, I held 

    ♠ KQ2
    ♥ AK3
    ♦ AKJ86
    ♣ A6

I opened 2C, intending to rebid 3NT over a 2D response. My robot partner surprised me by responding 3C. I decided that a 3NT rebid was still most appropriate, even though it might be a slight underbid. A built-in feature of the robot games is that BBO will tell you in advance how the robot will interpret a bid you're considering, and in this case, BBO indicated that my partner would take the bid as having an upper limit of 24 high-card points.

Partner bid 4D over my 3NT rebid. I'm liking my hand now, and would like to find out whether partner has the ace of spades in order to know whether I'm willing to punt on a grand slam (even though it's matchpoints). However, it's unclear what anything means at this point. Is 4NT an offer to play there? Or is it Roman Keycard Blackwood for diamonds? (Or even Keycard for clubs?)

I decided that a 4H bid couldn't really hurt. To my surprise, my partner leaped to 6NT.

I talked myself into the notion that he couldn't possibly bid 6NT without looking at the ace of spades, so I raised him to 7NT. My left-hand robot doubled. Uh-oh.

LHO leads the jack of spades. Dummy is a disappointment:

    ♠ 3
    ♥ Q54
    ♦ Q1093
    ♣ KQ1054

However . . . the spade lead runs around to my king. I'm not down yet! And if I can pick up the clubs for at least four tricks (by the jack dropping or taking a finesse), I'm going to wrap this.

I cash a diamond and LHO pitches a heart. Now I'm thinking it's even more likely that I'm going to be able to pick up the clubs (probably by finessing the 10 on the second round). I run diamonds and LHO pitches three spades and a club. On the fifth diamond, RHO pitches a club. Wait . . . they're both pitching clubs? Nobody's pitching hearts? Hmmm . . .

I cash the ace of clubs and LHO shows out. (Yes, he started with 12 cards in the majors, and passed over my 2C opening!) Now it looks like I'm back to being down one, right?

Well, not quite, as it turns out. I cash dummy's king and queen of clubs. On the first high club, LHO pitches a spade, but on the second club, he has to make a discard from

    ♠ A
    ♥ J1076
    ♦  -
    ♣  -

He didn't have a count on hearts because the suit hadn't been played and his partner hadn't pitched any. Keeping my 4H bid in mind, the robot decides to play me for an original holding of ♠Kx and ♥AKxx . . . so he pitches the ace of spades at trick 9!

Plus +2470 was a cold top. The hand was played 37 times. Over half the field was in 6NT, just making. There were five other pairs in 7NT doubled, usually on the auction 3NT-Pass-7NT, doubled by West. However, on that auction, for some reason the lead was invariably a heart, avoiding the difficulty that befell my LHO.

It all serves as a reminder that if you're going to double 7NT while holding an ace on lead, you may want to consider cashing it at trick one!

The full hand: