[GreenMan]

It's worth 25 cents to me to be able to start a game whenever I want. The robot inconsistencies are annoying, but if I don't get attached to the standings then it's no big deal. I use these as declarer-play exercise, which I need a lot of, and if the years-old bots were putting everyone else in a better-scoring contract then it's no big deal to me. I also like being able to review a hand and make comparisons right after playing it, when it's fresh in my mind.

I haven't had the can't-review-hands-at-the-end problem lately, so apparently that's an intermittent thing (or it got fixed).

[barmar]

granguru, on 2013-September-13, 10:47, said:

Have just played 4 hands and have a general feeling about this feature:

0. I will start saying I found the game addictive and with many advantages, but here I am to bury Caesar, not to praise him. The option to play whenever you want at your own pace is wonderful.

1. My main concern is that it is much harder to win this type of tourneys. It seems the 14 other competitors are the top of the list of the real tourney, which is unfair. Should be a random selection or a distribution that will produce a 50% average rank. It may not be so, but I had the feeling.

This is not true. The players are chosen totally at random. For those curious about the algorithm, it's whatever MySQL's "ORDER BY RAND()" does.

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2. Bots of the tourney should have the same level of skill (SW version) as the one we are playing so that they do the same when we play as when they played the real tourney. I played 1NT and made 3, a top surely. No: 37.5% Why? Most of the games were 1NTx made 1, even 1 was 1NTxx. Strange, to say the least, as humans dont X 1NT with 14, and usually declare with 5 points at the other side and a 5th card suit.

This isn't really feasible. We don't keep all the old versions of GIB online when we deploy new versions.

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3. (Spanish) Translations are very very poor. A warning is missing for trick one when it starts from the right. Some texts in the same line or area are in English and some in spanish. A text says that cards are being exchanged to permit you to BID, when it really is to play the hand. I undestand that this is not the definitive version, but this a failure seen since some years ago in many places. If you touch the button for explanations on the game the whole text is in English, untranslated.

Other than a couple of new messages about loading the boards, all the messages in this application are the same as for other robot tourneys. Are you seeing different translation issues here?

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6. Once I got a message that the tourney could not be loaded. Retried and it worked. Warning message should be improved. Will this be a frequent error? Probably not, but I can not tell.

We think we've fixed this.

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7. This point is not particulary restricted to IT, but to all bot play. Fred informed some time ago that bots wouldnt continue till the 7 level if necessary when
a. one competes to the 4 level with a minor suit
b. one double with a gosh hand and later show the suit and a strong hand. Bot continues up to the seven level resisting to let partner play the hand.
c. after a, say, 2NT overcall for minors, if p chooses D and opponents continue bidfing to game, if you give him an opportunity to play in 5C (with a 5-6 or 5-7) it takes it as a cue and jumps to 6D which is obviously doubled. Frustating thing is that 5Dx is a top and 6Dx is a zero.

Do you have a question about this, are you saying that the bot bid a stupid grand slam? If you have a complaint about a particular hand, please post the details in the GIB Robot Discussion forum.

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8. Bot playing is very very good. Bot bidding is also pretty good. Bot defending has the major fails. It is time to improve their defensive methods in at least the signaling area.
2 basic signals would improve and solve 80% of the defensive play.
1. Understand the trick one signal: Hi=encouraging Lo=Discouraging. (in future versions you could give player a window to select the signaling system he/she wants). A poll could be made to use the commonest method used by BBO players.
2. Understand the SPS signal when partner gives him a ruff chance. Lo=low suit return Hi=highest side suit return Middle= no special interest or trumps (if a valid option)
Probably there is a work to do in coding what is encouraging when a 6 (f.i.)is returned. No doubt, but a percentage play can be detected. If bot led the 3 and has seen the 4 from declarer and dummy has the 5 there is a very high chance that the lowest side suit is asked. Finally, anything is better than a blind return, as today, which is very frustrating. This implies also a discarding technic for the declarer-bot according to the signaling defense is using. Discarding hi under Hi-low if declarer wants continuation(and viceversa). Using UDCA bot must discard Lo to encourage continuation.(same method used by the defense).

Teaching the robots to understand signals is a hard AI problem. Unfortunately, we don't have any programmers with AI expertise.

[1eyedjack]

barmar, on 2013-September-15, 17:03, said:

This isn't really feasible. We don't keep all the old versions of GIB online when we deploy new version

I keep an open mind but currently am unconvinced about this. Seems to me that all that is required is to restrict the population of available historical tourneys to those more recent tourneys that used the most recent implementation of GIB. There would still be no shortage of tourneys to select, and this would address the single most glaring criticism of the format.

[cwfromoz]

I absolutely convinced its much harder to have a good result in these tournies vs regular robot tournies. Ive played about 50+ of the instant tournies and score masterpoints at a fraction of the rate I do in regular robot tournies. There must be reason for this. The only reasonable assumption is robots were much weaker at the time of the orig tourney.

[barmar]

cwfromoz, on 2013-September-16, 16:03, said:

I absolutely convinced its much harder to have a good result in these tournies vs regular robot tournies. Ive played about 50+ of the instant tournies and score masterpoints at a fraction of the rate I do in regular robot tournies. There must be reason for this. The only reasonable assumption is robots were much weaker at the time of the orig tourney.

I haven't played in as many as you, but I've noticed the same thing. I usually scratch in robot tourneys, but I think I've only been above average in an instant tourney once.

FYI, all the tourneys currently being used are from the 2nd half of 2009. So there have been LOTS of robot improvements since then.

[GreenMan]

I haven't noticed a difference in my average result in the instants. Though there seems to be a lot more variation -- I think I had an 82% and a 22% within 24 hours of each other.

Like I said, I think of it mainly as a chance for declarer practice and don't get too caught up in the standings. It's just not worth worrying much about.

[barmar]

There have also been other changes since these tourneys were originally played. We didn't have the "human declares" feature then, so sometimes you're competing against robot declarers. For some players, that may be a disadvantage

There's another difference for me. When I play normal robot tourneys, it's usually ACBL tourneys, but these are BBO tourneys. Maybe stronger players prefer the BBO tourneys for some reason?

[xeno123]

I think the instant tournaments are inherently more random than the regular tournaments. In the regular tournaments, all the GIB's basically bid and play the same (assuming the human bidding or play is also the same). Here, because the GIB's are being compared with older versions, the bidding (and to a lesser extent play) are likely to be different.

Here's a good example:

http://tinyurl.com/q5qowdq

In the original tournament all the GIB Easts raised their partner's 1♠ overcall to 2♠ which got passed out. By contrast, my (new-style) GIB East bid the better 3♣ and ended in a making game with an overtrick.

I really don't think there is any way to fix this issue short of using more recent tournaments (with GIB's that are more similar to the current version) or comparing your results to others that have recently played in the same instant tournament instead of only to the original players.

Peter

[barmar]

I guess the problem is that there are two opponent robots and only one partner, so the opponents have improved twice as much as partner. That does seem to put current players at a disadvantage.

[barmar]

xeno123, on 2013-September-17, 15:40, said:

I really don't think there is any way to fix this issue short of using more recent tournaments (with GIB's that are more similar to the current version) or comparing your results to others that have recently played in the same instant tournament instead of only to the original players.

We'll eventually load more recent tournaments (probably all of 2012) into the database used for this. We've decided that comparing with other players of the same instant tourney is not a good idea (e.g. you could try looking up the players in myhands). And it probably wouldn't be a very effective solution to this problem anyway, because it will take a long time before any tournament has a significant number of recent players (and as we load more old tournaments, it will take even longer); so they'll mostly be diluted by all the old results.

[lycier]

1- What's the default font for BBO?
2- Can BBO change background color in dialog box? now it is pure white in dialog box,I hope to change it into others,for example:light grey.

[1eyedjack]

1eyedjack, on 2013-September-15, 01:10, said:

Agreed. I am not paying any more money to play in a robot tourney where at different tables robots vary their decisions in identical conditions. Just played one where my robot partner was dealer. Half the room opened a weak 2D in first seat and half the room passed. How random is that? Think I will just wait an extra 5 mins for a level playing field.

Have changed my mind about this, to the extent that I now really quite like them.
It has its drawbacks, but I now think that these are more than countered by the benefits, which I see as:

1) most obviously, no delay in start
2) no delay in getting final result on your completion of final hand.
3) you get to see what happened at other tables immediately on conclusion of a hand, without having to wait for the slowest human to complete the entire tourney, and before you have yourself completed the tourney.
4) related to 3 above, the barometer score displayed on the conclusion of a hand is the final score and will never change (ie on awaiting others to finish the hand)
5) there is a guaranteed 0.60 masterpoints at stake for first place, contrasted with regular tourneys at off-peak hours which may attract only a hanful of players.

the dowsides to weigh against this are
1) different standards of bot at your table contrasted with others, leading to different actions taken in identical situations. I feel that this has potential for correction or improvement.
2) lack of stratification (of relevance obviously only to those who qualify for 2nd+ strata)
3) no format providing cash back options (such as the 55%)
4) not available on mobile devices (at time of writing. Doubtless will come eventually)

But if you are just on a hunt for BBO masterpoints, particularly in the wee small hours when reg tourneys are unpopular (and there would be only one strata as well as reduced masterpoint pool), the faster completion rate combined with max pool in my view trumps the downsides (assuming of course that you are not on mobile/tablet device and so have a choice).

[1eyedjack]

It occurs to me that Instant Tournaments may have the potential for undesirable amplification feedback as they say in audio HiFi circles:

Say you would rather play in an event with a guaranteed full section ranking for 0.60 Masterpoints.
Say that there are a large number of like-minded players.
So all these players online are minded to play in a tournament, and Lo! there happens to be a live tournament forming, with so far 4 or 5 players registered and 1 minute to the start.
So all these players decide to play in an Instant Tournament, where had that facility not been available they would have played in the live tournament which would then have been a full section and thereby eliminating the particular motivation that drove them to the Instant tourney in the first place.

As a result of this phenomenon more and more players get frustrated with the small (and ever decreasing) turnout to the live tourneys and themselves join the population of Instant Tourney converts, until ultimately all anyone ever does is play in Instant Tourneys,

Just a theoretical musing. I doubt that in practice it would ever come to that.

[diana_eva]

1eyedjack, on 2013-November-17, 05:36, said:

It occurs to me that Instant Tournaments may have the potential for undesirable amplification feedback as they say in audio HiFi circles:

Say you would rather play in an event with a guaranteed full section ranking for 0.60 Masterpoints.
Say that there are a large number of like-minded players.
So all these players online are minded to play in a tournament, and Lo! there happens to be a live tournament forming, with so far 4 or 5 players registered and 1 minute to the start.
So all these players decide to play in an Instant Tournament, where had that facility not been available they would have played in the live tournament which would then have been a full section and thereby eliminating the particular motivation that drove them to the Instant tourney in the first place.

As a result of this phenomenon more and more players get frustrated with the small (and ever decreasing) turnout to the live tourneys and themselves join the population of Instant Tourney converts, until ultimately all anyone ever does is play in Instant Tourneys,

Just a theoretical musing. I doubt that in practice it would ever come to that.

Each time we launch a new type of tourney it ends up partially hurting existing tournaments. So yes, this is happening to some extent. The challenge is to be able to keep a balance so that a new product addresses different needs and attracts brand new players instead of merely converting existing robot tourney players from other types of tourneys to the new tourney.

[hsheng]

but where or how will I get this new version?

[1eyedjack]

hsheng, on 2013-December-15, 11:39, said:

but where or how will I get this new version?

You automatically play the latest version when you access the game through your web browser with Flash installed.
This version is not available in the windows dowloadable client, nor will ever be. That interface has ceased development.
Instant tourneys are not currently available on the mobile app (andoid/ios) but that will come no doubt

[lycier]

Today I found that my hands ordering list were very wrong twice in My Results.
1- While I was looking on Yellows diana_eva in Team match #7847,the exact ordering are 1,6,9,8,2,5,7,3,4,10,12 and 11.
2- While I was looking on 55th Winter Nationals 2013 Ahamedabad -F-3/4 or F-2/4,same wrong ordering.

Btw,my new pc is windows7.

[barmar]

lycier, on 2013-December-23, 07:54, said:

Today I found that my hands ordering list were very wrong twice in My Results.
1- While I was looking on Yellows diana_eva in Team match #7847,the exact ordering are 1,6,9,8,2,5,7,3,4,10,12 and 11.
2- While I was looking on 55th Winter Nationals 2013 Ahamedabad -F-3/4 or F-2/4,same wrong ordering.

Btw,my new pc is windows7.

You may have clicked on a column heading to change the ordering. The normal ordering is by hand number, but if you click on one of the other headings you'll reorder by that column.

[lycier]

lycier, on 2014-January-04, 03:48, said:

Recently I unfortunately found my several new folder have gone missing from my "Hands and Result",I have to say I have about over 30 folders before,I know it may be too many.
How many folders can it be built in the Hands And Result?

I wanna to know the answer.

[1eyedjack]

When in the lobby you click on an online player's name you get a helpful popup window with loads of useful info, divided into tabs: Profile, Private Chat, and Table (if at a table). There is room for another tab: "Kibitzers" which could list the kibitzers at the table at which the player resides. As with the "Table" tab, this tab would only appear if the player is at a table, and perhaps should only appear if there is at least one kibitzer.

I think that it probably should not list kibitzers who have logged on as Invisible.

Possibly it should not list kibitzers at a viewgraph table.

Possibly the whole idea could be integrated into the "Table" tab - listing the kibbers as a scrolling window underneath the 4 players at table.