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Contract Bridge
L R Griffin
South Wales Evening Post, November 9, 2002
Part 2 of 2
I described last week how the computer program Bridge Baron 13 allows a player to bid and
play random deals against the computer. There is a variation of this in which the deals are from a nominated Championship
pairs event in the USA. Your score on each deal is match-pointed against the actual scores. Having played all the deals,
not necessarily in one go, you can see how you would have done overall. I prefer this to random deals.
In the Challenge section, you play special deals to test your skill in play. The bidding
is preset. If you do not make the correct play at any stage, the computer will not accept that play and makes you try
again, and again if necessary, until you find the right card. Here is an example.
Dealer East
Game all
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North
 10 7
 A
 A 8 7 4 3
 A 9 8 5 3
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West
5 4 2
J 10 9 6
Q 9 5
K 10 2
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East
6 3
8 7 5 4 3 2
J 10 6 2
Q
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South
A K Q J 9 8
K Q
K
J 7 6 4
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The bidding is given as: South-1;
North-2;
South-3;
North-6
West leads the HJ. Most of us would not do much more that win, draw trumps, and play
the ace and another club, for one down, We would complain at the unfortunate club break.
However, the computer would not allow us to play trumps at trick 2. Of course we can
find out by trial and error what the computer wants, but it is more satisfying to work it out. It eventually dawns that
you might be able to set up the fifth diamond for a club discard and not depend entirely on a favourable club
distribution. So you play a diamond to the king and lead the S8 to dummy’s S10. Cash the DA, discarding a club,
ruff a diamond, ruff the HK in dummy (never easy to ruff a master), and ruff another diamond. Then draw trumps,
crass to the CA, and discard on the master diamond. Exercises like this will help to sharpen your game.
I have not tried the facility to play “online” with three other players.
Bridge Baron 13 gives a great deal of entertainment and instruction. I enjoy using it
immensely.
If you interested in buying, possible web sites include
www.BridgeBaron.com
and
www.bridgemagazine.co.uk
Click here to read
part 1 of this review at
http://www.bridgebaron.com/reviews/bb13lrgriffin.html.
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