[runewell]

Have you tried this yet? Earning ACBL masterpoints with GIB at your table?

I've had pretty good success thus far. The bots are a bit quirky. On the one hand, when you scroll over a bid you find out exactly what the robot expects of your bid and what you should expect from it. On the other hand, sometimes you are in for a bit of a surprise.

It is a definite departure from some aspects of the bridge game. You almost never need to worry about remembering conventions - although and unexplained Lebensohl bid finally popped up after no such excitement in maybe seven or eight tourneys.

It's not so much a partnership game anymore as much as it is an exercise in bidding and declarer play. Those are valuable skills, but they will be overemphasized in exchange for little or no defensive action.

One more thing, if you get the best hand at the table and it has 12hcp, that has implications that you might not get from a normal game where there is no such assumption.

I think it's a decent alternative to the never-know-whatcha-gonna-get feel of individual tourneys, but it's a far cry from the norm.

[McBruce]

As most of the popular bridge programs allow, in these robot tournaments the rule should be that when North declares the robot goes for coffee and South plays the cards. Other than that small potential improvement, they are excellent additions to BBO.

Uday: if you decide to adopt this, it's best to just leave the cards as they are--don't actually move the human player to the North chair temporarily to declare the hand, just let the South player play cards for North and South while remaining in the South chair. Bridge Baron used to do (perhaps still does) this and I was always finessing the wrong way, remembering that LHO passed RHO's opener so RHO rates to have all the missing high cards --but forgetting that LHO and RHO were swapped when I took partner's chair to declare. Jack has this right, leaving the hands where they were and letting the South player play cards from both hands.

[Patapon]

I agree with runewell that having always the best hand isn’t even worth doing when playing in robots duplicate matchpoints.

This feature is nice when playing Robots reward Tournaments or robots races because of the ‘total points’ count.
When playing total points, one doesn’t like wasting his time defending a partial score when overtricks almost count for nothing. Another thing you try to avoid is playing part scores contracts then you tend to pass in 3rd seat when the game is hopeless as you know the numbers of hands available isn’t limited.

In these matchpoints’ tournaments, every player plays a number fixed of boards and any of them count as much as others.

Having always the best hand has implications that might not get from a normal game and that are not worse having. This only reduces the game.
Also this mean there is less competitive biddings and you are most of the time dummy or declarer but too rarely in defence.

In another hand I admit that having always the best hand make sure you I am not going to play 12 hands with 9 points average, passing all time and playing in defense with nothing to do.

Would it be possible to play robots duplicate matchpoints with random hands, where South hasn’t always the best hand?
South could be given an average of 11 HCP instead of 10( or NS 21-22 average This should insure you don’t
This would more look like real bridge and skills more valuable.

Being aware that nobody at the table will get more HCP than you get change the game. For instance when your partner overcalls and you have 11 HCPs you know he hasn’t more HCP than you then you include this in your reasoning. Same in the carding.
This doesn’t embellish the game. This reduces it actually. And this doesn’t make improve your bridge to think to things that do not exist in real bridge.

[barmar]

I agree with Patapon. I didn't even realize that the Robot Duplicate tourneys always gave the best hand to the human.

I'd also be happy with the human taking over for the bot when North is declarer, but I can go either way on that.

[runewell]

Even though defense is an important skill, I think it's better off giving the human the best hand, which usually means the responsibility of bidding and playing the hand. If the robots get a good run of hands and play 9 or 10 of them, what is there left for the human to show skill-wise? Not nearly as much.

[Sadie3]

lol...actually roaring.... so, the robot games are a good exercise in "how to manipulate the bidding so you become declarer?" I've had pards like that before.

[cherdanno]

Heh I much prefer always getting the best hand. I hate when my GIB plays a contract because his play can be quite terrible at matchpoints, and since he is not always equally bad at every table. (He is also not so good at reading the tanks of the defending GIBs )

[fred]

Our thinking re best hand:

Most (all?) bridge players enjoy holding good hands. We think the best hand format makes the game more interesting and more fun for a significant majority.

So this is mostly about "providing a format that we think the players will enjoy" as opposed to being about "providing a format that is fair as possible".

Fred Gitelman
Bridge Base Inc.
www.bridgebase.com

[runewell]

I thought GIB's interpretation of my hand was amusing, I held
♠AJTxx
♥KQxx
♦x
♣KJx

The bidding goes 1♦ on my left, pass pass and in the balancing seat I double. GIB assumes 9+ pts and 3+♣, 3+♥, and 3+♠. Fair enough, and GIB repsonded 1NT with 9hcp and six diamonds.

As I reviewed a possible second bid, I looked at what a 2♦ bid would represent now. No lie, GIB says it anticipates:
4+♣, 4+♦, 4+♥, and 4+♠


In the end I bid 2NT which GIB passed, just making.

[CarlRitner]

McBruce, on Aug 8 2009, 07:09 AM, said:

Uday: if you decide to adopt this, it's best to just leave the cards as they are--don't actually move the human player to the North chair temporarily to declare the hand, just let the South player play cards for North and South while remaining in the South chair.  Bridge Baron used to do (perhaps still does) this and I was always finessing the wrong way, remembering that LHO passed RHO's opener so RHO rates to have all the missing high cards --but forgetting that LHO and RHO were swapped when I took partner's chair to declare.

For as long as I can remember (Bridge Baron 13 I think), you have the choice to rotate
or not rotate the hands when south is the dummy. We're now at Bridge Baron 19, about
to be 20 very soon.

Jack probably gives you an option too, but I haven't dug into that program yet.

[eyhung]

fred, on Aug 15 2009, 11:19 AM, said:

Most (all?) bridge players enjoy holding good hands. We think the best hand format makes the game more interesting and more fun for a significant majority.

Fred, I agree that fairness is less important than enjoyment, but what about modifying the definition of "best hand" to be based less on HCP and more on playing strength? If I had to choose between AKxxx Axxxx xx x or QJx QJx QJx QJxx I'd rather have the first hand, but your algorithm would give the humans the second hand. A simple HCP + length of two longest suits algorithm would give the humans some more freak hands to bid and play, and might reduce inferences about HCP.

[barmar]

That's a good idea eyhung. GIB already has a notion of playing points vs. HCP, it uses it in many of its bidding explanations.

The problem with this is that you might never get to defend, since the opponents will hardly ever get distributional hands that they can bid high with.

[JoAnneM]

My idea of lots of fun would be riding down the road on a trip with my husband driving, and me playing an ACBL Robot Tournament on my iPhone.