ACBL     World Computer Bridge Championship, VI

Montreal, August 23-28, 2002

See some nicely played hands

See some nice pictures

Jack Retains Championship!  One IMP decides the 64-board final.

by Al Levy

After five days of computer-bridge competition, including a complete 20-board round robin (120 boards per contestant), a 48-board semifinal and a 64-board final, Jack nipped WBridge5 by 1 IMP.  The two finalists had played a total of 232 boards sitting both East/West and North/South...464 hands of bridge in all.  It came down to the last board.

Board 64
Dealer: West
Vul: E/W

                   North (WBridge5)
                  ª  A Q 9 4
                  ©  K Q 3 2
                  ¨  10
                  §  K 6 4 2

West (Jack)                   East (Jack)
ª  K 6 2                      ª  10 5
©  8 7 6 4                    © A 10 9
¨  A 9 6                      ¨  J 8 5 4
§  10 8 7                     §  A Q J 9

                   South (WBridge5)
                  ª  J 8 7 3
                  ©  J 5
                  ¨  K Q 7 3 2
                  §  5 3  

West    North    East     South
Pass      1§       Pass      1¨
Pass      1©       Pass      1ª
Pass      2ª      All Pass   

Opening lead: § 7

WBridge5 did well to stop in 2ª and had to make 9 tricks to tie the match.  While the programs had no idea of the state of the match, Hans Kuijf, developer of Jack, and Yves Costel, developer of WBridge5, along with their supporters and spectators, watched to see if the match would end in a tie.  At the "other" table Jack had gone down one in 4ª when North took a more aggressive view.  West led the §7.  There are four obvious losers, 2 clubs, one heart and one diamond.  If declarer could time the play correctly 9 tricks were possible on a crossruff.  However, when Jack returned the ª10 at trick two declarer could not make more than eight tricks.  In actual play, Wbridge5 played hearts first and diamonds second.  Each defender, after winning their Ace, returned a trump and declarer was held to 8 tricks...and Jack was crowned the 2002 World Computer-Bridge Champion.

Jack versus WBridge5 in 64-board final:

Round Robin
Leading up to the semifinals and finals, the 20-board round robin ended with Jack, WBridge5, MicroBridge and Q-Plus Bridge taking the top four spots.  GIB would have qualified for the semifinals but chose to withdraw from the tournament during the last round robin match because of technical difficulties.  The GIB representative, Bart Massey, did not believe that the (network timing) problem that GIB was experiencing could be fixed in the one day extension granted him before he would have had to play the semifinal match.

Jack won the round robin by 13 VPs.  Its only loss was to WBridge5 by 15 IMPs. WBridge5 did not lose a match.  Both programs, along with GIB (before the technical problem) and MicroBridge had scored well.

20-Board Round Robin, 25-VP Scale (IMPs/VPs)

Jack and WBridge5 won their 48-board semifinal match convincingly to set up the exciting final.  WBridge5 continued its streak of not losing any set of boards.

                                    Carryover         1-16      17-32    33-48    Total

Jack vs. Q-Plus Bridge                                                                      
Jack                               +22                 68         52         34         176
Q-Plus Bridge                                       25           3        58           96   

WBridge5 v2.3 vs. MicroBridge                                                           
WBridge5                        +6                 94         39         76         215
MicroBridge                                           8         30           8          46   

See some nicely played hands

See some nice pictures

Round Robin: (from left to right): Yumiko and Tomio Uchida, playing MicroBridge, and Rodney Ludwig and David Walker, playing Meadowlark Bridge .