[msheald]

No, GIB. I just passed and conceded 13 ricks when GIB did this.

https://tinyurl.com/2oa63ust

Mike

[nullve]

Me: You have agreed to play 2/1 GF and you hold the folllowing hand as South:

Spades: A84
Hearts: QT3
Diamonds: KQT
Clubs: K876

West is dealer, with none vulnerable, and the bidding goes

4C-P-P-X; P-5C-P

to you. It's your turn, so what do you do?

ChatGPT: Based on the bidding so far, it appears that your opponents may be in a slam try in clubs, and your partner may have a good hand with support in one of the majors. With that in mind, you should consider bidding 5NT (quantitative), indicating that you have a strong hand and asking your partner to bid 7NT with maximum strength or to pass with minimum strength.

Alternatively, you could bid 6D, which would show a good diamond suit and allow your partner to choose between bidding 7D or 7NT, depending on their own holding. However, this bid may not give your partner enough information about the overall strength of your hand.

Ultimately, your decision should depend on your partnership agreements and your assessment of your own hand and the auction. If in doubt, it's always a good idea to ask your partner for clarification or guidance.

Me: You have to choose a call with the South hand based on the information I gave you.

ChatGPT: My apologies for misunderstanding the question. Given the auction so far, and assuming that you and your partner are playing a strong artificial 2/1 system, the most appropriate call for you as South is 5D, which is a cue bid showing first or second round control in diamonds and asking partner to bid a slam if they have a maximum hand with club control.

Since your partner has bid 5C, it's possible that they have a good club suit and are interested in exploring slam possibilities in clubs. Your 5D cue bid will convey your strength and diamond control, which could be useful for your partner to decide whether to bid 6C or 7C.

If your partner does not have club control or has a minimum hand, they may choose to sign off in 6D or 6NT, respectively. However, by making the 5D cue bid, you are giving your partnership the best chance to reach the optimal contract if your partner has the right cards to bid slam.

---------

ChatGPT - GiB 1-0

[smerriman]

I'm a bit confused. You said you "passed" and conceded 13 tricks, implying as normal that you're South and were just switched in the bidding diagram.

Why would you want to do that? I can understand not liking GIB's initial pass, and not liking South's double, which both look wrong to me, but having done both of those, 5♣ seems reasonable to me.. obviously, North can't pass, and 4♥ seems very much an underbid. The main reason you're not making slam is due to South having too many clubs.

[msheald]

Hello! Thank you for your replies. I appreciate them.

Sorry - the diagram reversed north and south, which I did not notice when I first posted it.

This is a rather advanced discussion. As an intermediate player, I defer to my advanced colleagues if my reasoning is in error. I've put in bold my major points since the post is long.

Basically, I feel that north's hand is too weak to bid 5 clubs cue bid over a penalty double since that forces slam.

I preface my discussion with three points. First, this was a free game, so the robots were basic rather than advanced. Second, in my opinion, GIB (especially intermediate GIB) makes strange bids on occasion, and I, as the human player, have to take that into account when interpreting unexpected bids. And third, that all the human partner's I've had with play take out doubles through 3 spades and double for penalty over that.

I considered my double in south carefully - gambling for penalty, but I like to gamble from time to time, even though robot deals tend to make those double unlikely to be good bids in my experience. Still, that adds spice to the game and helps me to learn.

After north's initial pass, I figured it for 8 to 10 points, maybe up to 12 - enough to make a penalty double gamble worthwhile without the risk of trying to explore game that might not be there, or bidding the wrong game.

I understood that north's 5 clubs bid was likely a cue bid. North cannot have a club suit since I have 4 and west likely has 8 of them. Additionally, a 5 club cue bid makes south bid at the 5 level and eliminates the possibility of a major suit game try, and so, likely represented a slam try.

For me, considering the most likely card distributions, a game is more likely than a slam, so why would north prevent a game try when it had passed initially? I was left with a puzzling discrepancy. If north had 17+ points that would suggest a slam try (or a highly distributional hand), I would have expected something other than a pass at its first bid opportunity.

After the 5 clubs cue bid, North should expect south to respond in spades as a natural bid since north only has to of them. With the lack of bidding space, cue bid responses by south become problematic, though doable with partnership agreement.

North will not want to play in spades since south would have bid them if he had a good spade suit over the 4 clubs bid. As a result, 5 clubs likely means playing at the 6 level in hearts or diamonds. So, north would expect south to bid 5 spades (in the absence of cue bids), and north should expect to respond 6 diamonds (why go to 6 hearts since would require 7 diamonds by south if south does not have a heart fit? Additionally, south would still ask why north did not bid 4 hearts directly over 4 clubs if it had a good heart suit) and hope that south corrects to hearts if he does not have diamonds.

As a result, since a 5 clubs bid would imply a slam try by north and, as south, if I had been expecting north to have a good enough hand in order to try for slam, I would not have expected north to pass over 4 clubs opening. A difficult bid for north, to be sure, since a double at that level would be for penalty. But that is the nature of bidding over preempts.

That is why 5 clubs did not make any sense to me. For me, there were other ways to bid that would have been much less risky if north had the cards to support a slam try.

In summary, I agree that north's cue bid of 5 clubs is a slam try, or rather, would result in a contract at the 6-level, which north should have anticipated when cue bidding clubs. However, in my opinion, if north had re-evaluated its hand after its initial pass and wanted to explore slam rather than game after a penalty double by south, I think a different cue bid at the 4 level would have been less risky and allowed more time to explore the best contract. (Any bid over a penalty double at the 4 level should be interpreted as a cue bid after an initial pass by that partner, in my opinion, as long as partnership agreement is that any double over 3 spades is for penalty.) So, I concluded that 5 clubs cue bid was too unusual for my taste and not something that I would have expected a human partner to do, so I passed and conceded 13 tricks and went onto the next hand.

Thank you again for your consideration, comments, and teaching. I appreciate them. Best regards.

Mike

[smerriman]

Apologies for cutting your post short, but the issue is at the first hurdle since GIB plays the double as takeout (as do most humans). You can see this from the description.

Takeout up to 4♥ is the most common agreement (and often higher, e.g. definitely 5m for me) - what are you going to do in South when you have both majors and shortness in clubs, for example, which will be pretty common? You simply can't afford to not have a way to get into the auction. If I knew you couldn't find your fits over 4 level preempts I would be bidding them very regularly!

If you reconsider North's position from the context of responding to a takeout double, you'll probably realise why it now thinks it holds a very strong hand. Now, maybe it should bid 4NT to show a two suiter, though I don't think it has that defined. But it's going to be interested in slam one way or the other.

I still agree that its initial pass is not great though, but GIB is too points based to figure that out.

[msheald]

Thank you for your note.

Yes, I can see that as a take out double. Same concern though - a 5 clubs cue bid forces slam and preempts game, and I do not think north's hand is good enough to warrant that. Best regards.

Mike