[lycier]

---

obviously 2♦ was a unwise decision.
For 3rd or 4th seat,if robot play Drury,after 1♠,Robot should pass. that is to say Robot should determine 1♠ will be a best spot without the risk of lost game in the most case.

[DarsWine]

Pass here would be pretty deep because a spade game is certainly possible even though West is a passed hand. The bigger problem I have is GIB's indiscriminant use of 2/1 by passed hands, which is one of my pet peeves. It appears that the passed robots bid two of minor over a major any time they have 10 highs and less than 3-card support regardless of suit quality. In fact, I recently discovered that they sometimes even do this on a 4-card suit. Thus, passing two of the minor with a minimum opener as one might in real life can lead to a bizarre result. This could be avoided if the passed robot were programmed simply to bid a forcing NT as it would as an unpassed hand. This would allow for more intelligent subsequent calls by opener, including a pass with a minimum or subminimum. A possible refinement would be to permit a passed robot to bid two of a minor over a major only with at least, say, 6 GIB 8421 points in the 5-card minor. I think this would be a significant improvement.

[RSClyde]

I'm a big believer in raising spades directly with those hands in 1st/2nd seat. In 3rd/4th seat I just pass. "Pass" isn't deep at all, it just requires you to be thinking rather than on autopilot (which makes it no surprise that a robot wouldn't find it)

[1eyedjack]

I don't think that robots play drury.
East passing 1♠ would be rather masterminding. Perhaps the sort of thing that I would do. But I think that 2♠ raise by East has some merit. Delayed support via 2♦ shows extras in my book, and I don't feel comfortable about concealing the spade support entirely.

[DarsWine]

I, too, think that an immediate raise to 2S is entirely reasonable on the East cards, but, at least as I read it, the issue that is actually being raised by the criticism of East's 2D bid is whether the robots should be set up to pass 1S by a passed hand any time they have three spades and a minimum, which is what the critics seem to be suggesting. In response to the comment that all that is required to see that this is correct is some "thinking," I would point out that it is not the human's "thinking," we are talking about, it's the robot's. If a human wants to take a position and pass, that's fine (and, has been duly noted, it could well be right here), but West was the human on this deal, not East. I would much prefer to have the robots pattern out and leave the guesswork to me, bearing in mind that, in robot tournaments, one is scoring against the humans, not the robots, so everyone is in the same boat regardless of what we think of the robot's bidding. Do we want the robots to pass over a passed-hand 1S with a minimum, with, say, 3-5-0-5 shape? I would think not, but, although I know nothing about programming, I seriously doubt that GIB is sophisticated enough to be set up to pass 1S with some 3-card minimums but not others. If you make the robots pass 1S in this sequence with all 3-card minimums, the entire field will be in 1S, which eliminates the need for any further bidding judgment by the human, notwithstanding that playing in the right strain should be rewarded in the scoring.

I also agree that getting back to spades via 2D shows extra values (do the robots "know" this?), but, although a minimum in terms of HCP, the East hand does have a boatload of controls, so, in real life, I would have no problem raising to 2S after a 2H response by West over my 2D (if that is what I elected to bid), especially vul at IMPs. Plus, in real life I would have to explain to my human partner and teammates why we we played in 1S after we made four. I guess one question that also bears on this is whether the robots bid 1S over 1H with 5-3 in the majors and invitational values and then jump in hearts at their next turn. If that is the case, I certainly don't want to see the robots set up to pass 1S automatically with these kind of hands.

[1eyedjack]

This West hand is not quite ideal, but I have seen example hands where responder has 4 x Spades and 7 x minor opposite a 1♥ opener, and lacks the strength for a 2/1 response. On such hands the recommended response is not 1♠ but 1NT. Although there is a risk of missing a 4-4 Spade fit, this route increases your chance of bidding your long minor to play while reducing the (greater) risk of responder having an impossible rebid after 1♠ response and opener then inconveniently, but predictably, rebidding your second shortage. I should be interested to know whether, if West held a 7th Club, GIB would recommend a 1N response rather than 1♠

[DarsWine]

Interesting question. I would think that GIB might bid 1S over a 1H with a weak 4-7 to set up bidding the drop dead 3C over a 1NT rebid by opener. Of course, as 1eyedjack points out, partner almost never bids 1NT when you have this shape. I seem to recall that, way back when, Flannery was a part of the early 2/1 systems that first included the second-round jumps in the minor with weak 4-6s and 4-7s, which made for a lot less angst in bypassing spades and bidding a forcing NT over 1H with these hands. I agree that a forcing NT still makes the most sense in terms of safety, and it does leave open the possibility of finding a spade fit on the rare occasions that opener has a reverse into spades.