[mgoetze]

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First of all, GIB did not actually have 10+ HCP.

Secondly, penalty double of what?!? Does GIB mean it will have a penalty double if opps jump to slam?

I would have expected my pass to be forcing.

[barmar]

The book bid is 2♠: Unusual over Unusual, showing a constructive hand with ♦. But some simulations tell it to double, even though it doesn't have the full HCP required.

We don't have any explicit followons to the double defined in the bidding rules, so there's nothing that says your pass is forcing, it's just "I don't have anything to show". Meanwhile, for GIB to do something when 2♠ is passed around to it, it needs 11 HCP to double them for penalty, and 13 TP to bid 3♦, and it doesn't have either of them. Just because a simulation in the first round of bidding told it to bid as if it had 10 HCP, that doesn't mean it actually has them in round 2.

In your case, your correct rebid is 3♣, showing a minimum hand with long ♣ and not much defense. While there's a defense to beat it (they have to lead trumps whenever they're in), none of the robots found it (the one guy who went down did it to himself).

[mgoetze]

What I'm trying to say is that the description "penalty double" is extremely misleading if it's not actually trying to penalise anything.

[Siegmund]

I cant help feeling like, regardless of South's call, it is a bot error, if it said it was seeking a penalty and then failed to seek one when the opps arrived in North's better suit.

As for forcing vs not -- it would REALLY be nice if this was specified in the descriptions of all the bot bids; a much more important piece of information than the point ranges which are always phony anyway.

[barmar]

The reason it's described as a penalty double is because it makes this bid when it has points, but can't raise you or show its own suit. It's not some kind of takeout. By process of elimination, it must have length in the opponents' suits. Of course, when simulations override bidding rules, the hands don't match the descriptions -- that's the whole point of doing simulations.

As far as saying which bids are forcing, the problem is that there's nothing preventing the robot from passing forcing bids. Bidding rules can check whether they're in a forcing auction, but few do. So saying that your bid is forcing is just as misleading as when it said the robot had 10+ HCP.

We've been discussing fixing this, but then the problem comes up: if it can't find a rule that says what to bid, what should it do? Force simulations?

[Bbradley62]

mgoetze, on 2012-February-15, 14:27, said:

First of all, GIB did not actually have 10+ HCP.

barmar, on 2012-February-15, 19:33, said:

Meanwhile, for GIB to do something when 2♠ is passed around to it, it needs 11 HCP to double them for penalty...

It seems to me that doubling 2♣ says "if LHO bids my suit and it gets passed around to me, I will penalty double it". Regardless of whether the double of 2♣ is made based on bidding rules or based on simulations, this meaning should apply, and GIB should do what he said he'd do.

[barmar]

That's not how GIB works. It doesn't make plans and then abide by them. Every time it bids, it starts fresh, figuring out what the best thing to do is.

Would you really have preferred that it double 2♠?

[Bbradley62]

barmar, on 2012-February-17, 15:32, said:

Would you really have preferred that it double 2♠?

I (and, I think the others posting in this thread) just want GIB to be consistent: if he has a double of 2♣, then he has a double of 2♠. If he doesn't have a double of 2♠, then he didn't have his double of of 2♣.

[mgoetze]

Bbradley62, on 2012-February-17, 17:18, said:

I (and, I think the others posting in this thread) just want GIB to be consistent: if he has a double of 2♣, then he has a double of 2♠. If he doesn't have a double of 2♠, then he didn't have his double of of 2♣.

Right.

Doesn't GIB also do simulations of how the auction is going to continue? Won't it be less likely to double 2♣ if it knows that it's going to have to double 2♠ later on?