smerriman

I'm pretty sure a poll would suggest 2NT is a logical alternative. And 3NT is definitely suggested by the UI, since you know partner will get the message that something has gone wrong and pass. So I don't think it can be right to let the score stand.

Lots of people have claimed things like this (as well as the opposite). They've all been proven wrong by statistical analysis. It's a case of confirmation bias and the well known fact that humans see patterns where there are none.

I don't see what these two things have to do with each other.. no way E/W are finding 4♠ after that start if GIB passes 3♣. If going by scores alone, then GIB bidding over 1♠ was already the wrong choice.

This is very normal for GIB. South opened 2NT, therefore South has another club, therefore you'll get the club trick whatever you do.

Works great now, thanks!

I believe you're correct and it doesn't exist. Even with 65432 AQT KJT KT it'll rebid 2♠.

You posted the same message yesterday - ignore the fact it says it got 0 views (forum bug, it updates properly when it gets a reply); barmar usually comes through every few days to respond to all of the support topics at once so you don't need to post it multiple times. As a non-BBO rep, I can confirm the HTML for the input specifically has a maxlength set to 10 and works for me in multiple browsers - I would suggest: a) making sure it actually doesn't work; it's often possible that you can't see the last character after you type it even though it's actually there, due to how wide the characters are b) making sure there aren't stray spaces in the field; perhaps on their device a blank space is getting added automatically, taking up the room for the last character, and an appropriate delete may help. c) specifying the exact device / browser being used, ideally with a screenshot of what you see after typing 10 characters if at all possible, as that would help the most with debugging it.

Even if West would open with Jxxxxx, the finesse is 2:1 odds. So it seems the right play to me. (Though I agree with akwoo that if you pick up a 1-4 club split, you've probably gained enough.)

I don't think it would be very popular. The fact that GIB can't signal eliminates a significant portion of the skill / logic factor of defending, which is why most robot games are set up as best-hand.

There are lots of ways to raise spades - 2♠, 3♠, 4♠, 3♦, and 2♦, all showing various strength hands and various spade lengths. 2♦ is the only one that tells partner you have a good hand (invitational strength, 10+) with spade support, in standard bidding*. Any other bid would convey a weaker hand, so partner won't know when to look for game, or compete over further opposition bidding. *There are alternative ways of advancing overcalls, like transfers which are more popular at the expert level, and some may play a cue as not promising support. But promising support is the simplest approach to start with.

Was this is a reasonably recent change? It was certainly possible to view them for years; I would always check other players' results straight after a tournament finished to see how many boards they squeezed in, whether they had shot up the leaderboard with a slam, etc. All the links fail from day dot now. But if it was intentionally changed as, say, part of the server update, that would explain it.

This seems to be the key piece of information. For me when I bid a new suit over a weak 2, it's because I want to play there if partner has support (or am maybe looking for cards for a slam), so I don't think I would ever bid 3NT in this sequence. Maybe others would, but I'd definitely want to know what it meant.

Would it help? I haven't played one of these for a long time, but if I recall correctly most people tended to just bid whatever they like whether related to 2/1 or not. Individuals aren't the best choice of tournament if you're looking to have agreements with partner.

What's standard or not really depends on where you're from and what source you're using; this site for example says low *is* standard, and plenty of others say other things. Personally I would lead low from three small against a suit and high against no trumps, but GIB has simply been programmed to lead low in both cases. It leads high from a doubleton 97% of the time.

Choose any $1 or $5 Robot Reward tournament from here and click on Leaderboard: https://webutil.bridgebase.com/v2/tarchive.php?m=h&h=bbombadmin&d=bbombadmin then click on any score. This used to show the hands that player was dealt. For a long time now, it just says 'Invalid input'. I initially thought this was just a case of the delay where results sometimes don't load initially and you need to wait a bit, but these pages now fail permanently.

I don't understand East's 3♠ at all. What extras was it meant to show?

Exactly. It doesn't. While the help page says any tournament counts, its only tournaments where you can actually disconnect and that impacts others (with daylongs you can come as go and complete it over a 24 hour period). Any human tournaments count, and robot duplicates count positively but not negatively. Instant tournaments, daylongs, challenges, and casual play don't count at all. TCR is the average of your counting tournaments over the last 60 days, or unknown if you've played less than 10 in this period. Yes, if a tournament requires a min TCR, it's in the description. Not all do. The easiest way to get it up quickly is to play some (non-instant, non-daylong) robot duplicate tournaments.

No. 1.2% of 3.6%, i.e. once every 100 24-board tournaments, or so.

Yep. Barmar once said they system in place doesn't theoretically guarantee getting the claim result right (and that they were provided a different claim checker but it hadn't been integrated into BBO), but I've never seen it accept a claim which it shouldn't*. Compared to the play algorithm where extreme cases often don't come up in simulations, the claim checker algorithm always seems to find the exception. *Lamford claims to have found an exception to the converse, but I still haven't been able to prove it to myself satisfactorily yet. But that's not really a downside.

You're mixing up system with convention. Wikipedia: Natural systems can have plenty of artificial bids. Even Fantunes is considered a natural system.

Everyone has 5 stars if you look at your own profile. It's meant to be used for looking at someone else's profile, which compares you to that player and generates a result based on: (Nothing to do with what system you play.)

FYI, it's not; it's a single dummy algorithm. Not quite sure how it works but I suspect it's a bit like the Bridge Master idea, where it can rearrange cards between the opponents in order to try to generate the worst possible scenarios and see if that results in the claim failing. That's why it always rejects the claim if, say, the only way you can go down is a 5-0 split, even when the actual split is 3-2.

Only the last 60 days are considered, and you need to have played in at least 10 during that period for it to give you a TCR. You'll need to play in tournaments that aren't restricted to build it up.

In daylongs, not everyone plays the same hands. It's an anti-cheating measure; otherwise someone could just play twice with a second account. The person you compared with would have gotten their results on different hands, and it was just a coincidence they were in similar contracts. Each hand is only played by a smaller subset of entrants, so you can still get a duplicate score for each hand individually. You can click through a particular one of your own scores to see how others actually did that on that board, which is where your board's percentage comes from. But the overall ranking which averages your 8 results is a bit meaningless since it depends on whether you're dealt lots of flat hands or not where you have no chance of scoring much more than 50%.

Yes, the MP and IMP anonymous games are non-best-hand, so you get a completely random hand. But these are both scored duplicate, so no matter how good/bad a hand you're dealt, you can achieve a good score if you play your cards better than anyone else in your situation which is what your goal is on every hand. Most of the robot tournaments after logging into BBO are dealt best-hand, which rotates the deal so you always have the best hand of the 4 players, which it sounds like you'd prefer. Under Competitive - Free Tournaments, there's a Free Daylong Tournament (8 boards) every day of the week (though I think there may be a limit on the number you can play in a week - was 3 at one point) with huge fields. Plus an occasional extra one, like the Free Super Sunday Daylong (12 boards). Each hand is scored duplicate, so you can see how you compared to others who played the same hand. Note that while you also get an overall ranking at the end of the tournament, to reduce cheating not everyone gets dealt the same set of 8 boards - so your ranking is still somewhat subject to the types of hands you get dealt (eg lots of flat ones where almost everyone scores the same so it's hard to score more than 50%, or wide-ranging ones where you can achieve high scores). You can also play under Solitaire - Free Weekly Instant Tournament. There you're compared to ~15 players who played these hands in an old tournament. The tournament resets the deals once per week, so you can even play it multiple times to try different lines on the same hands - this is just a "practice" tournament; you're always compared against the same players who could only play it once originally, so there's no incentive for "cheating" by playing it twice. There are plenty of additional paid tournaments as well.