hessmike

I don't know whether to blame this disaster on the new software, on the fact that it happened in an Instant Game, or both. In an ACBL Instant MP tournament, I held AQJ84, AJ4, KQ65, 2. I was in 4th chair. So LHO opened 1 heart, then P-P to me. My hand is too good to balance with 1 spade, so I doubled, planning to re-bid spades over a diamond or club bid by my Bot partner. Now LHO-bot bid 2 hearts and my partner-bot jumped to 4 clubs (although a competitive 3 clubs probably would have been sufficient.) Before I followed through on my plan to bid 4 spades, I clicked on the meaning of the bid and the scary words, "cue bid" came back. So I just passed rather than "cue bid" and hear 5 clubs. The 4 club contract went down for a 3.6% score. Partner held K1053, Q75, void, KJ9543. At other tables, the bots had responded 3 spades over 2 hearts and the easy spade game was reached. Or, in the cases when my hand balanced only 1 spade, partner bid 3 hearts as a good spade raise. In no cases did the bots in that prior tournament ever bid 4 clubs, despite holding 6 clubs and just 4 spades. I understand that this is sometimes the price one pays for playing in an Instant event: the bot-actions are different with the upgraded software than they were at the time of the actual "real time" event. But what bothers me in the end is that the software requires every new suit bid over 4 clubs to be a cue bid. It should allow for the actual situation in which I had a combination that I judged too good for a simple 1 spade balance. As such, it should allow me to bid 4 spades over 4 clubs to signify real spades. If not, then in the future I will have to balance with just 1 spade because of situations like this. There is no empirical evidence in this case on what would have happened had I bid 4 spades over 4 clubs because none of the other 14 players was in my exact situation with a 4 club bid after my DBL and LHO's 2 hearts.

I am new to this forum but not to Bots, having played with them for almost 3 years in tournaments. Of the many Bot problems, perhaps my least favorite is the following, oh too frequent auction at MPs: You (with best hand) bid 1 club, LHO: 1 spade; Bot: pass; RHO: 2 spades. You have a 14-15 count with 6 clubs unsuitable for a 1 nt opener, but you want to compete, so you bid 3 clubs. LHO passes but now the Bot coms to life with a cue bid of 3 spades. My success rate with these situations is low: if I bid 4 clubs we're usually too high, and if 3 NT we're down 2 because the bot is "forcing to 3nt" but rarely has a stopper (or it might have bid 1nt on te first round.) The Bot doesn't realize that you are "competing" for the contract and may not have the 17-20 points it assigns to your bid. Conversely, it won't compete on its own, so you're stuck with overbidding in those situations. One could say that the solution is to pass 2 spades, but that almost always results in average minus A practical solution that I've noticed in checking actual results is that top MP players, with averages of 59-60, will open any/all hands with about 14- 18 points 1NT, even with a singleton! I think their idea is that the Bot bids better when it has a first round knowledge of your actual potential. Sure, they wind up in 5-1 fits when the bot transfers into their singleton, but the Bot's ability to compete to the right level makes up for those kinds of negative tradeoffs. I can't get myself to open a 14 ct (or an 18 ct) with a stiff, 1 NT. Anyone else out there run into the "unwanted 3 level forcing cu bid" ? Mike Hess