FROM THE INTERNET TO THE PRINTED WORD

Toward the end of September, my wife, Kitty, and I played online at a somewhat oxymoronically named casual competitive table against two robots from Bridge Base Online. In about 70 minutes, we played 16 boards, almost all of which were suitable for this column, or quizzes at my website, www.bridgeforeveryone. com, or both. This week, let’s look at six of those deals. They were each played at 16 tables, so we can get comparisons.

What is the best defense against four hearts after West leads the club ace?

On round one, Kitty (West) did not have a good bid in our methods. Next time around, she might have passed (not her style!), doubled for takeout or bid two notrump (showing both minors), but those calls would have been easier to penalize. (Three clubs doubled and two spades doubled can go down four. Three diamonds doubled is down only two, but that is still 500, more than a North-South nonvulnerable game.) North was optimistic in jumping to game, but South would presumably have accepted a game invitation, maybe bidding the hopeless three no-trump.

It looks very tempting to cash the club king and give partner a club ruff, but that lets the contract make. South wins East’s diamond shift, draws trumps, unblocks the spade ace-queen, discards dummy’s second diamond on the club queen, ruffs a diamond and cashes the spade king.

Kitty did much better, shifting to the diamond king at trick two. Now the contract had to fail. Down one was an 83.3% board. Six pairs made four hearts, and five went down.