The Compound Guard Squeeze is one of the most complex plays in bridge, with an exact reading of the layout being necessary. The ingredients are usually that only one opponent is guarding one suit, both opponents guard a second suit, and one opponent has Hx in the third suit. it is quite rare, but occurred on a hand last night at the Woodberry
The winning line on a trump lead is to draw trumps and then play a club. North can win and play a second club, but declarer ruffs and runs the trumps. North has to come down to a singleton club but declarer just cashes the last spade. If North throws a club, South will be squeezed in hearts and clubs, so he pitches a heart. But now declarer cashes a heart and can finesse the ten of hearts for its twelfth trick.
A more testing defence found by Ryan was the heart lead. Now declarer has to play differently and play the ace and king of hearts and ruff a heart high. Now declarer leads a spade and has to finesse the six to get an extra entry for the dummy reversal. This would be wrong however if North had the seven, and declarer has to guess. After that works, it ruffs the last heart and plays a club. North can win and play a second club, but East ruffs and finesses the eight of spades, Now he can ruff the losing club high, cross in diamonds and draw the last trump. A perfect dummy reversal.
At the table, the Robot played a normal line on the ace of clubs lead, followed by a second club, of ruffing, drawing two rounds of trumps and then it tried to ruff the fourth diamond, but South ruffed the third diamond so it was one off. I tend to think the robot's line was right, but unlucky. They are getting better.
Yes it should go down in practice on a heart lead. Except my robot in the North seat discarded a diamond on the third round of trumps (!)
ReplyDelete"They are getting better."
ReplyDeleteUnless the progamming is being updated, then I don't think this is true.
The Robots are handicapped by a lack of knowledge of the human's Systems. Every round they are confronted by different methods.
Some of things the robots do have no rational explanation, but that is also true of most humans. Maybe that is programmed in?
I think programming is being updated all the time. Maybe not the BBO robots, but Gooogle Deep Mind has put a lot into AI. In Go, chess and backgammon they are world class. Poker now as well. Bridge soon.
ReplyDeleteIf anyone wants a fun book on robot Bridge, I can recommend Danny Kleinman's "The Principle of Restricted Talent". Not quite Menagerie or Abbot levels of humour, but pretty good.
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