Leo LaSota

70% average is doable if your goal is to just max your average score; +30 IMPS in the 12 bd IMP games is doable also if your goal is to just max your score. However, you would have to focus to reach either milestone and probably not play more than a handful of games in a day, or you begin to get tired.

One other flaw with the current system is that you place players with a star all above players without a star. This distorts the separation of players at the top. This means that a Grand Life Master with 20,000 masterpoints that has not asked for a star will be seeded below anyone else that enters a game that has a star. I also find it strange that BBO still cannot assign a player both a star and a ranking. I have the "A" next to my profile, but do not have the star also. This means that when I enter a game with others that have a star, I am placed below them when determining the sections.

In speedball tournaments, the award for the section tops does not vary much at all for mid to large sized tournaments. In the system currently used for ACBL robot tournaments, you have a section top = 0.9 for 30 tables and a section top for 31 tables only equal to 0.60 for 2 of 3 sections (0.66 for the 3rd). Why should the section award increase by 50% when you decrease the entries by 1????? (0.6 award for 31 tables; 1 entry removed = 0.9 for section top (50% increase over 0.6!!). Get this corrected BBO.

Masterpoints are not a pure measure of a person's skill by any stretch of the imagination. Masterpoints are related to 3 factors: 1) How many sessions a person plays 2) How well the person does in the sessions that they play (level of skill) 3) How much luck they receive (by far the lowest of the 3 factors in determining a player's overall masterpoint total). While it is true that masterpoints are not directly correlated to skill, a person must generally have a considerable amount of skill if they accumulate a large number of masterpoints. I have earned over 10,000 online ACBL points and believe that this is largely related to my skill level and because I have played alot of sessions. I believe that BBO's current formula for adding sections in the robot games results in a decrease in the correlation between masterpoints earned and level of skill. I, as well as many other successful players, are upset at BBO minimizing awards to the winners by so much. The current system does result in a slight increase in the overall number of masterpoints awarded. However, the system also significantly reduces masterpoints earned by the top players. BBO really should adjust the maximum section size to 20. This would be a small compromise that would still result in higher overall levels of masterpoints awarded than when they ran games with just one section. However, that would significantly reduce the loss in masterpoints for the top players. If BBO increases section sizes to 20 and begins stratifying the sections, with equal number of "A", "B", and "C" players in each section, this would satisfy many of the participants. It would also add more meaning to a masterpoint earned against the robots since the very successful players would continue to earn a large number of masterpoints.

The new format of determining number of sections is extremely bad. The maximum award that BBO awards members is winning 0.90 (.06 per player * 15 players = 0.90). Under the old formula of one section, whether the session had 15 or 48 players, the overall winner got the deserved top prize of 0.90. Under the new formula, BBO adds a section at 16, 31, & 48!!!. So, if you are lucky enough to play in a game with exactly 30, you have 2 full value sections. If you are lucky enough to play in a game of 15, you have one full value section. If you are lucky enough to play 45, 46, 47, you are lucky to have 3 full sections (15, 15, 15; 15, 15, 16; 15, 16, 16). If you are unfortunate to get 16, you get 2 8 table sections. If you are unfortunate enough to get 31, you get 10, 10, 11. If you are unlucky enough to get 48, you get 12, 12, 12, 12. BBO absolutely better increase max section size to at least 20. If not, they will see decreased participation as more and more members catch on to this.

The 18 board tournaments seemed to be doing OK when you offered an 18 bd MP game :02 after the hour AND an 18 bd IMP game :32 after the hour during prime hours. When you eliminated the variety of 18 bd games offered and went back to only offering 18 bd MP tournaments, the level of participation dropped significantly which is no surprise. I am baffled as to why you elected to eliminate the 18 bd IMP tournaments. I do not believe that you gave them enough time before you eliminated them entirely.

I win a greater % of the robot IMP games that I participate in than the robot MP tournaments. When everyone has the same opponent, each board is weighted the same in MPs. In IMPS, some boards are alot more pivotal than others. Let us say that on average, about 9 of the boards in a MP event vary alot in the outcomes of the participants. Let us say that in an IMP pair tournament, an average of 4 boards are pivotal near double digit IMP swings. The total number of swingy boards may be more in the MP tournament, but the importance of each swingy board in IMPs is magnified. If a player has an outstanding result on a board in MPs and everyone else has the same lower score on that board, you start about 1/2 of a board ahead of your competition. In IMPS, if there are 15 imps that you gain for an outstanding result, it is much more difficult for the other players to pick up those 15 imps on the other boards if you play well. The top players will frequently get these swingy boards correct. Therefore, the top players you see near the top of the leaderboard in IMPS even more than you do at MPs in the robot tournaments where everyone has the same opponents, same partner every hand.

You are completely incorrect with your statement that the IMP pair online tournaments are high luck oriented and very random. It is not random that I win over 1/3 of the IMP pair online tournaments that I participate in. You fail to recognize that in the robot IMP pair tournaments, everyone has the same partner and the same opponents on every single board. Therefore, to win requires a great deal of skill, just like robot MP tournaments. Yes, there are certain aspects of the game that are more critical in IMP pair scoring as opposed to MP pairs. However, both forms of the game greatly measure skill since everyone has the same partner and same opponents on every hand. The reason that IMP pairs in live bridge is very random is because everyone has different opponents on every board and tons and tons of imps can be gained based on who your opponent happens to be on a swingy board.

Defense improves as well as declarer play through practice with the GIB robots. Many hands on defense can be worked out through visualization and you can prevent your partner from having any opportunity for a defensive slipup.

In fairness to leftfoot since you are showing us a result that he had, leftfoot is a very fine declarer and frequently does well with the GIB robot games.

I have seen the GIB invite over 1nt with 55 in the majors via stayman and then 2nt. I suppose one could choose to try bidding 3 of a major over 1nt-2C-2D-2nt with a suit oriented hand and a decent 3 card major. I have not tried this method myself.

I did not figure out the correct play on the hand either and went down in 3D. There are many areas for me to continue to improve with the games.

Barmar, Thank you for the good news. The ACBL robot games are a good measure of ability at certain aspects of bridge and requiring the human to declare all of the hands for their side will only measure ability even more. By the way, please make an announcement in a news story before you begin the "experimental" trial.

We all see some strange bidding with the GIB robots on some hands, but this one is one of my favorites: Tournament 5080, Board 12: Bidding goes 1S (LHO) - Pass - 2D (RHO, 2/1) - 2H - 3C - 4H - Pass - Pass - Double - Pass - Pass - Redouble - Pass - 4nt!!! (Blackwood from Partner). I just cannot see any justification for the redouble showing 25 to 31 total points and partner then bidding blackwood after the opponents have opened, bid 2/1, and I have already passed 4H. This was from an imp game and I believed 4H could be made. Indeed, the hand makes 4H :(

Fred, I realize that GIB programming is setup to have the same meanings for follow up bids on any auction that begins in the same way. Therefore, any hand that begins with the auction 2nt - Pass - to the robot is expected to have the same meanings regardless of what the human player actually holds for their 2nt bid. However, I have have seen an auction in the past in which the responding hand transferred to 3 of a major with a weak hand over a 2nt opener. I have also seen the robot Texas on weak but distributional hands. Therefore, it was certainly odd to see the 0607 dummy on the auction 2nt all pass. I assume that this particular hand was just an odd case that has yet to be programmed into GIB. I know that there has been alot of effort into updating the programming on GIB. I have seen great improvement in many auctions for GIB in the last year. One auction that has not been corrected so far is that GIB rarely uses Gerber to ask for number of aces. I see many hands where after a strong nt auction that begins with a 2nt opener or better, the robot just jumps to 7 without asking for aces.

I opened 2nt as well and played it there when the robot did not transfer to hearts with 6 hearts and 7 clubs and 2 jacks. I believe that the robots are misprogrammed on certain auctions if you make a "non-standard" bid. Of course the hand that we held for our 2nt opener was 4360 shape.

I do not remember the exact score, but I had a 92% + in a MP 12 bd game with about 40 players.

BBO, Many of the 12 board ACBL IMP games that have been offered have had a large number of entries. Members appreciate that you now offer this as an alternative form of the game to the robot duplicate tournaments. Please start offering 18 board IMP tournaments as well.

Barmar states, "We're only adding it to the duplicate games". Seems to me like Barmar is contradicting what Uday stated about using the human declares for N/S applicable to total points games. BBO definitely should apply this to the total points games. This would result in a more skill based final result. A player would have to play more hands well and fast to win these tournaments.

Thank you for adding this into the total points games. This will be highly advantageous for those of us that declarer faster than the robots :)

If I had to guess, hands played in nt average slightly lower in terms of rank of card that wins trick 13 versus hands played in a suit contract.

The total number of points won by participation in this "bridge-related game" cannot possibly have a large effect on stratifying or bracketing since you state that this has such a low level of participation.

Thanks for the clarification Uday. I was concerned that it meant my level of bridge when playing with the robots is at the basic level :)

When I logged into BBO recently, there was a popup listing my user id, my BBO ranking, Masterpoints, BB$ Balance, and Robot. I am curious what is meant when the last line says Robot: Basic?

No idea why you seem to be getting angry at me in your follow up response. I was simply responding to Zelandakh's statement, "In addition to that, it has become clear from reading various threads here that the ACBL use these MPs for seeding purposes. Do you not think that seeding should be based on performance playing Bridge and not various bridge-related games?" Seeding is a term used when top level expert teams/partnerships are essentially pre ranked at the beginning of an event in order to fairly distribute the top teams/pairs.