[iandayre]

This hand was played 31 times in an ACBL Robot IMP Tournament today.

http://tinyurl.com/onp2xdf

There were 5 different ways that the human players chose to act:

14 Passed the 1D opening, and passed again after 1H-P-1S. The auction ended there. NS -140 My action.
5 overcalled 1NT. It went P, 2D trf, P, 2H. All Pass, NS +110. Certainly aggressive but within the bounds of reason.
3 Doubled 1D and after P, 1H, 1S by opener, they doubled. Perhaps they thought this was support. Not surprisingly this led to NS -360 or -460.

The other two are the more pertinent to this Board.

4 doubled, and after P-1H-1S, they passed. Not terrible. What happened? It went P, 3H by advancer, P, P and now GIB West had some amazing epiphany that its balanced 5 count had become golden. It jumped to 4S! This was -1, doubled twice for +100 N/S, not doubled twice for +50.

And then there were the 5 human players who doubled 1D, and after P-1H-1S raised to 2H. Hopefully we can all agree this is awful. But it was wildly successful. GIB W was right there with 3C on JTx. Not a Spade raise with 4 card support mind you, a non-forcing new suit on a 3 bagger and the balanced 5 count. Feel free to check out the auction from there, it was the same at all 5 tables except that some Souths doubled the final 5C contract (a 3-3 fit) and some did not. NS anywhere between +1100 and +250.

I am getting tired of the excuse that simulations led W to make this 3C call. If so, the simulations programming must be disastrously out of whack. There may be one time in 10 or less when these bizarre short suit bids by GIB at the 3 level or higher lead to good results. Most of the time they lead to abject disasters like this one. Yet they keep happening, we keep on reporting them, and nothing is done.

I sincerely hope I am wrong, but I predict no comment from BBO on this post either.