[Bbradley62]

Check out the play of the club suit:

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[calm01]

Well found Bbradley62.

GIB seems to like no-win defensive plays - GIB almost seems to specialise in the no-win 'technique'.

GIB frequently employs another no-win defensive play.

I call this particular unnecessary defensive play of King under dummies AQ "Group Captain" syndrome. This is because in the second world war apparently pilots of all nations flying for the Royal Air Force would see their death as nearly certain/imminent and deliberately fly their fragile plane into a mountain as this was certain death. In this way the continuing worry of when their life would be lost was resolved!

When the King has gone, the unnecssary play of the Q under dummies AJ is a similar 'tactic' favoured by GIB.

As a defender you rarely know if declarer just wants an entry to dummy and does not intend to take the finesse or cannot risk the loss of the finesse.

Human player often entertain the Group Captain syndrome for the the pleasure of certain loss but I doubt whether GIB has similar psychological problems!

Please fix this all too frequent bug in GIB defenses.

[barmar]

I've explained why GIB plays the Q under dummy's AJ many times: it assumes declarer is playing double dummy, so will always take a winning finesse, so it doesn't matter which card it plays.

I don't know why East played the Q in this hand, though.

[calm01]

Barmar,

Thanks for the prompt reply and the effort involved in looking again.

Yes you did explain before about the Queen. Overall the answer is till unsatisfactory as:

1) the assumption that declarer plays double dummy is often false,
2) as you suggest there is more involved than just this false assumption,
3) it is a frequently recurring poor defence by GIB,
4) there is a bug which needs to be addressed if GIB is to stop frequently losing tricks when defending.

Perhaps it is time to raise the priority of this issue in the list of bugs to be fixed - what do you feel?

[barmar]

It's on our to-do list.

[Bbradley62]

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Trick 9: Why would East pop ♦K, which crashes the ♦A, and cannot gain, best I can tell.

[cloa513]

Bbradley62, on 2012-October-28, 14:07, said:

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Trick 9: Why would East pop ♦K, which crashes the ♦A, and cannot gain, best I can tell.

Probably assumes they have the AD and JD which places East with the unusual underlead of Axxx clubs.

[Bbradley62]

cloa513, on 2012-October-28, 18:07, said:

Probably assumes they have the AD and JD which places East with the unusual underlead of Axxx clubs.

There should be no assuming about ♦J, since it's in the dummy for everyone to see.