calm01

Diamonds must be longer than spades otherwise spades might have been bid before diamonds. The exceptions might include 5 rotten spades and 5 superb diamonds in what is likely to be a slam going hand. I could, in these circumstances, understand GIB treating 5 rotten spades as a four card suit. Even if GIB had 5 rotten or a normal 4 spades it would now surely bid them or repeat the diamonds. So with at least 9, and a likely 10-11 cards in spades and diamonds, it is unlikely to have a balanced hand. So 2NT is an inappropriate bid unless described as a forcing but waiting bid denying a decent 6 card diamond suit. So GIB's inferences must be faulty in still retaining the possibility of 4/5 spades.

http://tinyurl.com/6oh2pqk When partner has limited their hand by a 1 1NT rebid, surely you require a jump repeat of a major suit at the 3 level to be invitational not forcing. I assume 2S would be a weak sign-off, 4S unilateral game bid - also a sign-off, so it appears to require 3S to be invitational. There are other forcing bids available if required. Have I missed something?

bbradley62, Nice one again. I find that GIB frequently has only 5-4 for its UNT bids - so perhaps it expects 0-4-5-4 or 0-5-4-5 distribution!

bbradley62, Nice one. Could explain the frequent inability of GIB to recognise 6-5 distributions when, for example, opening 1 diamond and later twice bidding spades. My experience is consistent with the following concept 'held' by GIB: if you do not open a of major you cannot possibly have 5 of them. Your example goes one better in the sense that you cannot even have 4! I think it may be about time for BBO to get the original author(s) of GIB to sign a maintenance contract so some sensible bidding principles can be added.

http://tinyurl.com/7u7m8s2

http://tinyurl.com/7gw6zts Whatever happened to 3rd hand high as a guiding principle? Is GIB all thumbs?

I agree with jyrki-63 that GIB sometimes does not wait for a 8 card fit to revalue its hand. This is a potentially fatal flaw for its bidding. Fixing some sequences will help in the short term but will not solve the underlying problem. So the proposed fix will add more complexity to its code and make further fixes that more difficult, more risky, more costly and slower to implement and require more skill. Such fixes therefore bring forward the time GIB will need to be retired. Doing the job properly - teaching GIB basic bidding principles - is cheaper in the long run assuming BBO want to stick with GIB come what may. But I feel sure that BBO knows this but continues to take repeated short term views to address the users frustration. The long term cost of this approach is very high. May God have mercy on the BBO computing soul as BBO appears to be on a path to a software development buffer with no reverse gear.

I agree that GIB doubles inappropriately and because of this its responses to doubles are unduly conservative and doublers rebids can be weird as here. GIB's doubling style has some similarity with the somewhat aggressive Blue Team style. Each one of the Squadra Azzurra could play in 4-2 fits better than most players play in 4-4 fits so they could get away with an almost any distribution style of double. GIB is no Garozzo. Updating GIB doubling style and its responses to doubles is overdue. Usual choice - if its easy to do - just do it. If it is not easy - consider replacing GIB.

http://tinyurl.com/7z66yv3 The bidding GIB to GIB goes something like this: GIB 1 GIB 2 ----------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------- I have an opening hand with at least three diamonds partner I have 5 spades or more I have at least 6 good diamonds and a near game hand in diamonds and no real interest in spades I don't care, I have 7 spades I still do not have even 1 spade but my diamonds are I still have 7 spades and can only see my cards, self-supporting at 5 level so shut up partner OK partner, good luck, one of us to know when to stop. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Please refrain GIB from appearing to be the most contemptuous bidder known to computer science. The only consolation is that GIB appears to be contemptuous of all its partners equally and often! I assume BBO does not wish to be associated with such behaviour by its computer program, so fix it please if only for your own self-respect.

http://tinyurl.com/7kso6ro GIB lead at trick 4 (Q clubs) seems manic - there is no combination of cards (such as Jack pinning) which makes this a sensible choice of clubs and has no suit preference value. It has the limited value of forcing dummy to win but a small club would 99% of the time have the same effect. When is BBO getting a simple lead table for GIB to follow except in rare circumstances? If the answer is it is too difficult then mark it as another nail in GIB's coffin. If it is easy or moderately easy then just do it please. There is a bridge joke which goes "not having any is no excuse for not leading partners suit". In a similar vein "a random choice of cards when leading is worse than not leading".

http://tinyurl.com/6u6j67u There have been reports about GIB not giving partner a chance of a trump promotion by leading a non-trump suit. Here is an example where GIB fails to ruff high in third position (it used the 5D rather than the 10 diamonds) when a different kind of trump promotion might be possible. It would not have worked here but there seems to be a significant gap in GIB defending skills when defending trump contracts. When some bridge players get past beginner stage they just love trump promotions of various kinds because it seems like magic to them. My experience is consistent with GIB not having been programmed with any concept of looking for and/or exploiting possible trump promotions. When do you feel might be practical to 'educate' GIB past the beginner stage in this respect? If the answer is it too difficult then perhaps it might be another argument in favour of replacing GIB with a better program that is easier to both enhance and extend.

http://tinyurl.com/735foa8 GIB chose the deceptive lead of 9C at trick 4 - certainly deceived its partner: me! Please do not say it might be simulations that suggested a non-standard lead. To be a reasonable player you must honestly communicate with partner except for rare circumstances and then be prepared to apologise to partner. Of course an apology from GIB doesn't get you very far even in a rare circumstance! So please teach GIB how to employ some kind of normal sytle of leads. Fred may think that GIB defends well - but this cannot be possible until it is taught to use lead tables in most cases.

http://tinyurl.com/7d4sdqd What is the point of the 4H cue bid if it does not agree diamonds?

http://tinyurl.com/83p4van 3S was not described as forcing and I could have passed. In the event I raised to 4S and was somewhat surprised to find GIb go slamming. Is the description of 3S wrong?

http://tinyurl.com/84h4f4k

http://tinyurl.com/7npwhyv The robot declarer seemed to make two errors in trump management: - failure to draw the last trump before playing side suit so risking a ruff, - failing to ruff high to avoid a possible over-ruff. The robot got away with it this time, but its play appears to be a failure of basic trump management.

http://tinyurl.com/7btzcpa If simulations give this kind of result perhaps the minimal number of simulations need to be trebled. If necessary get faster servers.

Barmar said: "GIB has a table of opening leads, but I don't think it's used in the middle of the hand except for honor leads." Perhaps the opening lead approach could be extended to the middle of hands. Then GIB will begin to get past the palooka stage as a defender. Fixing leads is much more important than fixing an aspect of bidding because leads impact multiple times in each and every hand. Being able to trust partners leads informs what to do and what not to do, where high cards are and where high cards are not, what declarer needs to do and how to disrupt declarer. So leads provide critical insight in the defence. Knowing when to lie to partner is a skill that can only be built on a basis of trust. Fixing leads for GIB must be a mission critical issue. Go to it wit gusto and pleasure.

http://tinyurl.com/8ydvaf2

Barmar asked: "Was this hand using the download client? It has an older bidding DB" I employ http://www.bridgebase.com/client/client.php Concurrently using different versions in is a recipe for extra work for you and your colleagues and confusion for users seeing others comments without context. Please for all of us align the versions as a matter of priority. If you get resistance from colleagues to an alignment of versions - begin to see the source of resistance as a real problem to progress and as a training requirement. If it is not practical to align the versions, withdraw the older version(s) giving clear information with good notice about how to transfer to the single version.

http://tinyurl.com/6qj4kar

http://tinyurl.com/ctplwj6

http://tinyurl.com/d2g7j4j

http://tinyurl.com/7gpry5v

This is the classic behaviour of about 50% of bridge beginners. At one bridge club I occasionally played at in Europe they had a simple policy about partners who passed forcing bids - they added the date of the offence and their name to a list on the club notice board. It was amazing how old the last entry was! Of course a computer cannot be shamed, but maybe Fred can be.