THE ROBOTS ARE WEIRD AT TIMES
Wade Lnenicka of Smyrna, Georgia, sent in this senryu: Bridge is a tough game / Most who try it fail badly / Then why is it loved?
The robots at Bridge Base Online usually play reasonably well but occasionally do something truly inexplicable.
Look at today’s deal. The final contract of six spades went down one after West led the club ace and continued with a second club. Which card won the setting trick? If you guess this correctly, you should go to Las Vegas as soon as it reopens; do not pass Go, do not collect $200.
In the auction, after South opened two clubs, West intervened with three clubs. (He did not have a way to show a heart-club two-suiter.) North passed, not having a five-card suit to bid or a club stopper for no-trump. But after East raised clubs, and South rebid four spades, North used Roman Key Card Blackwood. South showed four key cards (here, three aces and the spade king), and North signed off in six spades.
This contract should go down if West leads the club ace or either singleton six!
At this table, South took the second trick with the club king, drew trumps ending in hand and led the heart six. Now you would expect West to have split his honors, playing the jack or the queen. Then, sooner or later he would have taken the setting trick with his other heart honor.
We are lacking in imagination. West covered the heart six with his seven, and declarer played the two from the board! So the heart seven won the trick — down one!
1. America’s Cup: Ironically, in 1851, an English team was first at the quadrennial trophy. But we’ve been dominant since and in 2017 will again defend the breeze.
2. Steinfeld Cup: For the second year in a row the Chesapeake Bayhawks hold the trophy in this field sport whose major league has eight whole teams that lay across the country.
3. Web Ellis Cup: The New Zealand All Blacks currently has the league trophy, but what is best remembered is when in 1995South Africa hosted and the Springboks won.
4. The Woodlawn Vase: The second of three major trophies handed out in this symbiotic sport of socalled gentlemen.
5. Grey Cup: Not a soccer team, the Saskatchewan Roughriders are the current cup holders in a foreign league that plays an American sport.
6. The Harmon Trophy: Open to criticism, people say it’s a bunch of opinionated hot air since it is given not for winning a specific competition but for general excellence.
7. The Anschutz Trophy: Currently held by Sporting Kansas City, a team