A family of liars received a
surprise package in the mail. When they opened it up, it was a robot.
But not just any robot, a robot that would slap anyone who told a lie.
It didn't take more than two minutes for the family to figure out what
the robot does... and end up with red cheeks:
"Where have you been?", asked the father when his son came home.
"What do you mean? I just returned from school", said the son.
"Smack!", came a slap on his right cheek.
"OK, OK. I saw a movie with friends", admitted the son.
"What movie?", asked the father.
"Err, Harry Potter", said the son.
"Smack!!", came another slap on his left cheek.
"OK, we saw a porn movie", the son broke into tears.
"Porn? When I was your age I didn’t even know the meaning of this
word", said the father.
"Smackk!", came the father's turn to get his correction.
"Hahahah, you can immediately see that he is your son", laughed the
mother.
"Smackkk!!!", came the hardest slap, and her laughter turned into
tears.
They decided to teach the robot how to play Bridge to "help" him relax
a little and to become their 4th hand. And also to replace
"that nosy neighbor who can't keep her mouth shut", as the father put
it - before getting another slap. "But it is true! She really is nosy
and blabbers all the time", he said and got another slap.
All went well with the robot's bridge game, he turned out to be an
excellent 4th, until they tried to teach him some basic conventions.
"He is not willing to accept any artificial bid, he'll just keep
slapping us anytime we try to use one", protested the mother.
Here is an example:
Dealer South, all vulnerable:
The bidding should have been longer, but due to all the slaps flowing
around during the process, South broke down and bid 6♠, skipping
Blackwood.
The son, sitting West, bid 2NT to show both minors and got the first
slap (because he bid NT with an unbalanced hand).
The mother, sitting North, cuebid HIGHEST of the two suits shown by
West (obviously 3♦
cannot be natural after West showed 5 cards in diamonds). Their
agreement was that LOW cue, 3♣, would show a forcing hand with hearts,
and high cue shows a forcing hand with spade support.
Mother's 3♦
showed a good hand with spade fit (3♠ would be non forcing) – and also
triggered a round of slapping from the robot, followed by two more
"corrections" on the next two control bids.
West lead the ♣K. Declarer took the ♣A, tried to pull trumps by cashing
the ♠AK and finally went down two, losing a Club, a Diamond and a Spade
(he managed to ruff the third diamond in dummy).
"Just bid 3♠ here, and we stop in 4♠. 6♠ can't make!", he said and felt
another hard slap.
"Move over!", said the robot, who had learned to talk meanwhile, and
switched seats with the father.
West lead again the ♣K and the robot won the ♣A and played the ♠K. Now
he switched to the ♥AK
and ruffed the third heart with the ♠7. Then he played the ♠8 to the ♠A
and a fourth heart from dummy. East ruffed with the ♠Q but the robot
discarded his club loser. He ruffed East's club return with the ♠9,
continued with the ♠2 to dummy's ♠4, and on the two good hearts he
discarded his two diamond losers.
"I learn very fast. I learned to talk, I learned to play and now I also
learned to analyze: If West has 10 cards in minors, and I need hearts
to break 2-3, I must assume that he has one spade. I therefore played
only one round of spades before starting to establish the heart suit.
That way I managed to preserve two possible entries to dummy. By the
way... I also learned how to lie", said the robot with a metallic
giggle.
