Monday, February 22, 2010

The fast GIB is still pretty good (bridge)

Playing in one of the robot races, GIB plays a hand that made me take notice.



After an uncontested auction GIB N ends up in 3NT on the ♣Q lead. Can you spot what GIB did that got my attention?

7 comments :

Anonymous said...

Hook the 9D after the T drops from East?

Anonymous said...

Playing imps i would take a deep finesse on the first round of diamonds.

In fact, if LHO contributed DT or D9, I would duck. I am wondering if on defense if GIB good enough to split with T93 :)

Regards,
Alex

Anonymous said...

Beered you, obviously.

The Pretender said...

The correct answer comes from Alex. GIB actually ran the D8 at trick 2, I'm sure with the intention to duck the first round of diamonds. Besides protecting against 5-0 onside, notice that by ducking the first round of diamonds, you're also protecting your contract against all 4-1 diamond breaks. It seems natural to play a diamond to an honor, but if the player with ace fourth ducks, you now have no communication to set up the rest of the diamond suit. By ducking the first round, you can win the continuation on the board, and lead the other remaining diamond to set up the suit while still having the heart entry to cash the diamonds.

It's clearly the right play, but not an obvious one at all. I could see many humans getting this wrong, but it's a simple hand for GIB, even on the fast setting.

Memphis MOJO said...

I've not tried the robot races, but they are obviously IMPs or total points.

Do you have a link to the actual deal? How did diamonds divide?

The Pretender said...

@MOJO

There are no hand records for the robot races, I just wrote down the hand myself. I do remember that the diamonds broke 4-1 offsides with AT9x behind.

My best guess at the hand was that East had Qxx Jxxx AT9x QJ as I remember the doubleton QJ of clubs. The auction went 1S-1N-2C-2D-2N-3N

Memphis MOJO said...

Thx.