[gordontd]

The current discussion about the randomness or otherwise of robot hands mentioned a few times the human getting the best hand at the table. I understand that it was introduced to reduce the number of times the human was dummy, sitting bored for 3 seconds while GIBs played with themselves, but now that the hands flip to let the human play when dummy, wouldn't it be more interesting to go back to random assignment of hands?

[Bbradley62]

Interesting point. Or, maybe the reason was to avoid hands where human passes throughout and defends with 3HCP. Maybe a compromise: ensure that one of N/S has the best hand. This should almost always require human's active participation, while also disallowing him to take bad-bridge shortcuts that he's currently able to take because he knows his partner is limited in strength.

[johnu]

The best hand to human feature was there before they started human declare games. In fact, there are still "classic" games where declarer does not switch to the human player. I haven't played one of the classic games since the human declare games debuted because I think I can declare better than GIB so letting GIB be declarer lets other players take the same number of tricks that I do.

I only played 1 robot race where it wasn't best hand human. I thought I played within a couple of hundred points of perfect and scored something like -4000 to come in dead last by about 3000 points. I thought the cards were turning when opponent GIBs only bid and made a non-vul game Besides being card racked, it wasn't that much fun to pass almost all the time and just follow suit most of the rest of the time.

[iandayre]

The main reason why I would prefer to keep it as is, with human best hand, is that it is impossible to defend intelligently with the bots since they don't signal. The last thing I want is to have to defend with them much more often than I do now.

[Bbradley62]

iandayre, on 2015-February-12, 20:02, said:

The main reason why I would prefer to keep it as is, with human best hand, is that it is impossible to defend intelligently with the bots since they don't signal. The last thing I want is to have to defend with them much more often than I do now.

Did you see my suggestion? It was that instead of always South with the best hand, either North or South should always have the best hand. This should not increase the percentage of hands on which you defend, except maybe by very little (in cases where North and either East or West tie for most HCP).

[johnu]

iandayre, on 2015-February-12, 20:02, said:

The main reason why I would prefer to keep it as is, with human best hand, is that it is impossible to defend intelligently with the bots since they don't signal. The last thing I want is to have to defend with them much more often than I do now.

I think they signal but it may just be random carding since I haven't figured out what it means. The GIB notes say they signal but I'll believe it when it's documented in actual play.

[Bbradley62]

johnu, on 2015-February-12, 21:44, said:

I think they signal but it may just be random carding since I haven't figured out what it means. The GIB notes say they signal but I'll believe it when it's documented in actual play.

Best I can tell, GIBs pretty reliably give count but they have no understanding of suit preference signals.