TRY TO DESCRIBE WHERE YOU LIVE

Steven Wright, a standup comedian, said, "It's a small world, but I wouldn't want to paint it."

A bridge hand contains only 13 cards, but the more accurately you can paint it for your partner, the more likely you are to reach the best contract.

As an example, look at the South hand in today's diagram. You open one diamond, partner responds two clubs ( natural and game- forcing), you rebid two no- trump, and partner continues with three diamonds. What would you do now?

A good idea after the awkward one diamond - two clubs start is to rebid two diamonds with all hands containing five or more diamonds. ( If partner has a four- card major, he will show it now.) Here, therefore, you might have rebid two hearts. But things have worked out well. Partner has shown primary diamond support. Now you should bid three spades, showing where you have primary values. Then partner might roll out your preferred form of Blackwood, or he might just jump to six diamonds. Real bridge players don't use Blackwood!

Six diamonds makes easily here because the diamonds are 3- 2 ( 67.8%) and the clubs are 4- 3 ( 62.2%). But if there was a bad split somewhere, declarer would need the spade finesse ( 50%). This makes the contract's probability almost exactly 71%.

At Bridge Base Online, five out of 16 pairs got to six diamonds. Two pairs, though, played in six notrump by South. What were the results?

One robot woodenly cashed the two hearts, but the other robot led the spade four!