[shif6]

Playing defense with a partner who rarely signals is frustrating. I thought one exception to this programmed unresponsiveness was that the robot would give attitude when a suit is broken on defense. Perhaps, however, this exception is only on the opening lead. In the middle of a hand in an instant ACBL tournament an hour or so ago, holding a 5 card spade suit to the K, the robot played the deuce in response to my spade A. The auction had gone 1h-x(by me), 2h-2s-3h-3s-4h-p-p-p.
I did not lead the A on the opening lead, but led it when I got in. Seeing the deuce, I switched suits.
Unless a partnership was playing upside down signals, no human being would play the deuce in this situation. Is this a glitch or is the robot actually programmed to be as unresponsive here as it is with its discards.
And, if so, why is it programmed that way. With discards, why isn't the robot programmed to give attitude on the first discard and count thereafter? Why is no information (other than the robot can afford to discard a card) the default?

[smerriman]

According to the system notes, GIB is meant to give an attitude signal on the opening lead.

However, I proved that's false. You simply can't read anything into their carding at all.

As to why, I think pre-BBO versions of GIB did include signals and many other options you could configure, but it seems anything but bidding sequences is too hard for the BBO programmers to touch.

[nige1]

smerriman, on 2019-March-08, 02:08, said:

According to the system notes, GIB is meant to give an attitude signal on the opening lead.However, I proved that's false. You simply can't read anything into their carding at all. As to why, I think pre-BBO versions of GIB did include signals and many other options you could configure, but it seems anything but bidding sequences is too hard for the BBO programmers to touch.

You can tell some robots your preferences in bidding (system and conventions) and defence play (leads, carding, and signals).
A language such as Kungsgeten's brilliant BML (Bridge Markup Language) would be the perfect medium for such communication.
BML can interface with BBO's FD (full disclosure) but a stand-alone version might be easier for players to understand.
Among obvious benefits, BML could be used, at the table, for humans and robots to disclose agreements to each other, directly and automatically.
This would help to level the playing field in robot (and human) competitions.
It would also help to develop an open-source bridge-robot.