[Antrax]

My partner and I want to work on our defensive signalling, starting with the lead. We can't play vs. humans as we would like to pause play frequently and discuss things as they occur. We thought about using two bots and using dealer scripts to ensure they declare (or just pass throughout).
The question is how to ensure different honor combinations occur frequently enough? I'm guessing that with < half the deck, the player on lead won't often have KQTx and other "interesting" combinations, so I would like to somewhat skew the odds in favour of being dealt touching honors, etc. Any idea how to do it?
Has anyone done anything similar to this? Any other useful ways of practicing trick 1 signals?

[Antrax]

In the meantime I'm going with

(hcp(north)+hcp(south)<=20)                                  &&
((hcp(north, spades)   >= 3) || (hcp(south, spades)   >= 3)) &&
((hcp(north, hearts)   >= 3) || (hcp(south, hearts)   >= 3)) &&
((hcp(north, diamonds) >= 3) || (hcp(south, diamonds) >= 3)) &&
((hcp(north, clubs)    >= 3) || (hcp(south, clubs)    >= 3))

Since I don't think dealer can figure out who's going to be on lead. In any case, this should give a fair chance for the opening leader to have some honor combination, and if not, I'll just increase the HCP in each suit and/or require hascard for the T or 9, etc.

[paulg]

Just to say that I am probably not the only one interested in your progress.

Antrax, on 2013-January-02, 11:27, said:

In the meantime I'm going with

(hcp(north)+hcp(south)<=20)                                  &&
((hcp(north, spades)   >= 3) || (hcp(south, spades)   >= 3)) &&
((hcp(north, hearts)   >= 3) || (hcp(south, hearts)   >= 3)) &&
((hcp(north, diamonds) >= 3) || (hcp(south, diamonds) >= 3)) &&
((hcp(north, clubs)    >= 3) || (hcp(south, clubs)    >= 3))

Since I don't think dealer can figure out who's going to be on lead. In any case, this should give a fair chance for the opening leader to have some honor combination, and if not, I'll just increase the HCP in each suit and/or require hascard for the T or 9, etc.

The dealer scripts are quite powerful but I think predicting GIB's bidding is expecting too much Unless you create a 1NT-3NT auction or very simple game auction for them, although this might be a good approach?

[barmar]

As long as you give the bots the majority of the points, they'll bid something. I don't think he said he wanted the bots to be in a specific contract, although it shouldn't be too hard to make them likely.

[Antrax]

That's one of my backup plans, yeah. Since signals vs. NT don't really depend on the level of the contract, I thought I'll give one gib a balanced 15-17 and have it deal, and give the other one a balanced yarb. That way we can defend 1NT constantly. But so far even this simple script is useful.
[edit]
Didn't see barmar posted. With the exception of balanced 11 vs. balanced 11, giving the bots 20+ HCP seems to be enough to get them to bid. We had two hands passed out so far.

[Zelandakh]

You could give the dealer 15-17 balanced and their partner 10 without a 4 card major or 6 card minor. That should get you defending 3NT consistently without giving too much away and solve the issue of who is on lead.

[paulg]

I expect you've done this, but for newbies experimenting with dealer scripts ...

A good way to enable both partners to practice is to fix the dealer in a specific position when using dealer scripts, using the settings in the General tab of the Deal Source menu. Then check the checkbox for 'Randomly rotate generated deals 180 degrees' in the screen where you enter the script and the hands will be rotated appropriately whilst maintaining the settings you want.

For example, fix the opener to West and then force West to hold the 15-17 notrump hand and East to hold 10 points without a 4 card major or 6 card minor. The rotate switch will now mean that the opening bid will be 1NT but it will be made by East or West randomly, so both North and South get to practice leading.

[Antrax]

Good idea.
So, to make "west" always open 1NT, we use:

hcp(west) >= 15  &&
hcp(west) <= 17  &&
shape(west, any 4333 + any 4423 + any 5332)

And we'll make "east" responder that won't transfer/stayman out of NT:

clubs(east)    < 6 &&
diamonds(east) < 6 &&
hearts(east)   < 4 &&
spades(east)   < 4 &&
hcp(east) >= 0

You can tune the 0 in the last line to make sure you end up in 3NT if you prefer.
One surprising point is that dealer(west) doesn't work - you have to use the checkbox in the GUI. I wonder why that is?