[etha]

debstander, on 2019-April-14, 16:43, said:

Absolutely, Theo. Complete craziness. No human partner would have ignored those hearts to support a contract in Diamonds.

I think it is because of its insane methods i.e. 2h and 3h are non forcing so it has to make a forcing bid but I could be wrong.

[debstander]

So here's another disastrous bidding fiasco that resulted in something horrible like 3♥ down 4.

Here was my line of reasoning. Open with clubs, perfectly standard. Partner comes back with 2♣, all right -- it is what it is. East intervenes with a 2♠ bid. At that point I had to ask myself whether I could push a little higher. We were not vulnerable and the ops were and I was hoping that if I pushed them to 3♠ we could defeat their contract. I had a hand full of spades. So I bid 3♣. Opposition passes and what does my Crazy Robot partner do? Suddenly out of the clear blue sky, with only three miserable hearts in its hand, it bids 3♥.

Why? I mean, the logical thing would be to either bid the nice diamonds partner is holding or otherwise pass.

Why the hearts? I had no idea what was meant and obviously had one foot off the precipice with no turning back. So I passed.

Why the hearts?

---

[smerriman]

Always read the description of your bid before making it.

Seems odd - I would have assumed it showed 5 clubs and is competitive only - but 3♣ is described as showing 17-18 total points (along with 4+ clubs), so I guess GIB is interested in game. The description of 3♥ is also odd - says nothing about stoppers but 8-9 points and 4+ clubs.

So odd bids, but reading the descriptions would have saved you.

[TylerE]

debstander, on 2019-April-22, 19:11, said:

Open with clubs, perfectly standard.

You should be opening all balanced 14s and some balanced 13s 1NT playing with GIB, because GIB bids so much better on those sequences.

[oldoc]

debstander, on 2019-March-31, 20:01, said:

Using this site again after a couple of years' absence and everytime I log on and play a few ACBL Robot tournaments something happens that makes me want to ask for my money back. Yesterday the issue was when my Robot partner bid Stayman in a response to my 1NT opener and when dummy went down, my Robot partner didn't have four of either of the majors. So how can THAT happen? And today, in a Robot tournament, I had 15 points and opened 1NT and my Robot partner eventually bid 4NT, which was described as invitational to 6NT, with my partner having "17-18 HCP." Since the description said "High Card Points," not Total Points, and I had 15 HCP, I went to 6NT. Well, guess what? My Robot partner did NOT have 17-18 HCP. It had about 14, and we were down two. So again, the description accompanying the bid was misleading and erroneous.

What is this? Surely this system needs some cleaning up? I also see people winning tournaments by using non-standard bids, for example, opening with a four-card major and similar practices which really discourage me from shelling out good money just to pit myself against a system that can be gamed and cannot be relied up.

Anyone else feel this way?

If Robot were a real person it is doubtful that he/she/it could play more than half dozen hands before being physically attacked by his/her/its partner. While his/her/its bidding is often questionable, his/her/its opening leads are absolutely off the wall terrible.