Leading Malahide player walks into a brick wall with eyes open

Recently  I was playing some hands on Bridgez. Its a website where one can play 16 hands per day and compare with 100s of other folk of similar afflictions. This means those with time on their hands who like to play bridge.

Now my man Wolfy ..a short dude with a large mouth and a set of teeth like a wolf fish.
Well I think the image I am thinking of is a wolf fish .. I saw one on National Geographic once.
Declan the Donplayer told me he knows one that lives in Swords.

Anyway Wolfie is dealt a balanced 14 count with 5 card diamonds and chooses to open 1D... guess he has the wrong values for 1NT opening .. and his partner bids 1 Spade and its back to Wolfy who produces the amazing bid of 2D. Little Red Riding Hood in the West quietly doubles for takeout and the Wolf is porridge.

Poor Wolfy is declaring 2D doubled with a 5-0 fit and wonders what happened. Meanwhile Galligan declares 1NT doubled and emerges on the opposite side with 10 tricks ... 3 of them doubled overtricks. Funny thing Wolfy considers himself my equal or better.
The problem is this 2D second bid. It should start with a 6 card suit. That hand is some sort of 1NT
hand either a strong one or a weak one or a 14-16 one.

Another day last week I came across this hand

I had played the hand online in 6H and after seeing the Heart Jack on the first round of Hearts
I played the restricted choice line of playing for 4-1 trump break and duly made 6H for about 88% score. For some reason I had it in my mind that some established players had gone down in 4H but on searching for their results I could not find them so I guess it was my imagination. I will look some more so.

This was the hand I meant to show but I got mixed up with the previous hand ..When I played the above hand the East West robots bid 5D over my 4S contract and I decided to double that.
Getting 5D down 3 doubled I was reasonably happy but I figured 6H or 6S was making and was surprised to land the 90% score.
Therefore I looked at the results and was surprised to find two very decent players had both declared in 4S and both had gone down 3 in the contract despite double dummy claiming 12 tricks is there.
Now this story is not about knocking these 2 lads ...

Its about all those folk who look at the double dummy sheet or printout and say ..Hmmm partner floored that contract and should have done better. The truth is one should examine the full story and find out how did partner or yourself go so far away from double dummy. I was lucky on the board to get  the free money crack at doubling 5D.

Seems they both got the Diamond Ace lead and a heart switch. Winning they ruffed a heart and
tried to draw trumps ...succeeding on the 3-2 break in trumps ...
However on this day trumps were 4-1 and our 2 intrepid declarers hit the dust and lost control
of the hand. Looks like normal play as we are playing matchpoints here.

However I will let my old pal the DOS based GIB robot from back in the late 1990s have a go.
The text based GIB robot was built by a chap called Matt Ginsberg and is still a capable bridge playing program. The current version is the well known robots on Bridge Base Online

So robot declaring 4S gets DA and Heart 8 switch and goes up HA as expected.
Now GIB switches to GIBSON which is the more powerful engine and its first thought is
Heart King and after 42 seconds it duly plays the Heart King and discards the club 2.

Trick 4 is in the tank .. S2 S5 SK s4
Trick 5 ... SQ H4 ....and amazingly here the robot plays SPADE ACE ..
Trick 6 .. takes the club finesse with Queen
Trick 7 .. cashes Ace of Clubs
Trick 8 ..ruffs a diamond
Trick 9 Top Heart

and East is helpless .... 10 tricks for the GIB robot ...

I wrote this live as the robot was playing the hand ...Curently the robot is stuck in what seems
to be an endless loop ..complaining about ..
"Inconsistent change to sample  " although at same time saying ..
"Perfect line "

So that is our robot ...Some hands are worth a little extra look ..

Just to finish both BJ and Karl are rated well above me on Bridge Now ..with Karl
being in the top 3 or 4 players of the 700 regular weekly participants.

http://bridge-now.com

						57 / 58 0.88% B.J. O'Brien Custom South 4♠XXX -3 A♦ -150 57 / 58 0.88% Karl Cashen Custom South 4♠XXX -3 A♦ -150