Deep Finesse
by William Bailey

CD-ROM for Windows 95/98/NT - Version 2 US$39.95 from Deep Finesse www.deepfinesse.com

On his own admission the American author is not a very strong "real-life" player but is "fanatical about analyzing hands post-mortem". Therefore, after eleven years as a database developer at Oracle Corp., he decided to take a year off to pursue his dream of building a bridge program that would analyse hands to perfection. As Bailey explains in the Installation and Owner's Manual: "An imperfect analysis assistant was not good enough. I did not want fuzzy assessments of positions even if they were accurate 98% of the time. I needed to know the truth, always. Enter Deep Finesse . . ."

Bailey's CD-ROM can be used by those wanting to improve their playing skills on hands either put on the screen by the users themselves or just randomly dealt within the program. But its main use is as a means of checking hand analysis, which ties in with the author's thinking because the CD is sub-titled The Interactive Bridge Hand Analyzer. It analyses hands double dummy and many professional bridge writers and commentators depend on Deep Finesse to ensure that they do not make mistakes.

However, rather than dwell on double dummy problems, I also tested the program's capabilities at a more practical level by checking on hands that had appeared in newspaper and magazine articles.

The following deal provides a simple but neat example:

Dealer: West. Game All. 

In a report on this season's Great Northern Swiss Pairs a writer stated that 4 could make with care but that: "3NT by N/S can be defeated and was at one table when West led Q and continued with a low spade after South had ducked. South won the second spade to play K-Q, but West took the second club, cashed two spade tricks then switched to K, cutting declarer's communications."

So I clicked on Enter New Deal and inserted the four hands together with the contract and the declarer; then, initially overriding the CD, I played the hand trick by trick in 3NT as above.

However, after the first top club had been led and ducked at trick three Deep Finesse was showing South as having the winning cards, which meant that the contract could succeed against any defence. I let the program continue on its own and, instead of leading a second top club, it simply cashed J then entered dummy via A to run dummy's remaining diamonds, before leading a club to the Queen. West could win and cash two spades but finally had to give South a club trick for the contract.

That must have been easy for Deep Finesse, because it came up immediately with the winning line, but even the most complex problems just take a little longer! Until they try out this CD-ROM most players think that what Bailey has achieved is not possible, so I can do nothing less than recommend it to anyone who wants to check or double-check their own or someone else's hand analysis.

Peter Littlewood