smerriman

I told him 36 hours ago that the decision was subject to an appropriate explanation in the forum, so will see if that eventuates, but it's getting pretty late at this stage.

No, 2nt is entirely artificial and can be used with any hand. You might be unsure about game or considering bidding grand slam.

The robots will assume all other players at the table are playing their system, and are incapable of understanding anything else. (The 'alerts' themselves aren't even used by the robots for their own bids; they're more for humans and don't always reflect what the robot actually has).

A lot of those hands might have overcalled 1♥ though. I think I'll pick a spade but I see no problem with a heart either.

In fact I just saw he started a challenge and gave up after 2 boards. So I'll call it here - removing him from the tournament. sampakh will retain his score for the time being and will revisit if this affects qualifiers. Apologies to all affected - was against my better judgment to include so many new players but I decided to give them the benefit of the doubt :(

I sent him a message asking him to make sure he finished them all in time, and he replied positively, but it does seem unlikely :( Am following up again. Given his only challenge so far was against sampahk who seems unlikely to qualify (but will of course wait for his other results), I may just drop him out.

The finesses only give you 2 tricks in diamonds out of the box; while the ♦J would fall, the ♦K would still be out. But both East and West have to hold onto diamonds for that to work, which leads to the squeeze magic on both opponents on the last spade..

:( This is probably the most clear-cut 0% play I've seen yet.

thepossum believes BBO do not generate the hands at random, but intentionally rig them solely to annoy him. No matter how many times statistical analysis has demonstrated this to be false in the past, he repeats the claim regularly with nothing to back it up - other than once in a while posting a single hand and mentioning how 'non-random' it looks to him.

You may also want to consider not using shape at all - eg hearts(north)<5 and spades(north)<5 is a way of cutting down many of the combinations instantly.

Your partner can pass the xx with nothing to say; it's obviously not a penalty pass. But you've already doubled twice; partner has already denied a fit and clearly doesn't want to bid on over 2♦ so doubling a third time seems crazy.

You've asked this many times before. The answer hasn't changed. I suspect your followup message won't have changed either, but feel free to prove me wrong :)

That's a lot of IMPs :)

I just did, and it didn't seem too bad. Just pick any old word and a random number, altering the number until it works. For example, vampyr1 works, as does banana7; for more common words try random numbers, eg bridge8423 works - though less common words would be easier. (And don't use your pin number ;))

I would love to see that hand diagram :)

Almost. I was saying Gerber would avoid this, and *asking* whether it would have been the right call :) One person on BridgeWinners mentioned what additional information the leader would have, but not whether this would cost more long term. I'm guessing it does, but was posing that question here as I wasn't really sure how to quantify it. Agreed with this. To be honest, I thought all of the lower level bids over 1NT are pretty much set in stone these days other than a few minor variations, so wasn't aware there was a way of going slower. How would you bid these hands (and generally ones missing AK too) in your system?

I'm not following what you're saying. Sure, 6NT won't make always.. but not sure what that has to do with my question.

[hv=https://www.bridgebase.com/tools/handviewer.html?s=SK94HQJ8DAQJCKQT9&n=SAQJT7HKT9DKT3CJ7&v=n&d=n&a=1NP6NPPP]400|300[/hv] I posted South's hand as an IMPs bidding problem on BridgeWinners. As I didn't want to influence the results, all I stated was strong no trump, 2♠ range ask, 3♣ puppet, all other responses standard. So far there are 26 votes for 6NT, and a couple each for 2♠ and 3♣. If partner is missing the AK of hearts, we shrug our shoulders; bad luck but slam was worth bidding. When partner upgraded to a 1NT opening and we're missing two aces, and we had a bid to detect that, it feels like maybe we made a mistake. The only downside of 4♣ appears to be that the opening leader will get a slight negative inference due to the lack of a lead directing double of 4♣. Does this cost more in the long run than avoiding slam here?

Issues here are more likely to apply later in the bidding, if the opening bidder starts trying to make up for what appears to be a mistake and partner catches on that something went wrong.

Those solutions are already in place. If you subscribe to BBO prime, you won't see ads. Or any other paid activity will hide them for a week, so just pay 29 cents or whatever it is for the cheapest robot tourney and you're set for the week. A small price to pay for the otherwise free service.

No, I was randomising the spot cards each time; the above were just two examples, but it consistently does not signal with any combinations. Past tense. GIB hasn't been updated in what's getting close to 3 years, and the only developer who used to interact with the forum left just before that.

As you must be aware based on your other threads on the same topic, this is not true. Any time simulations are involved (with basic GIB during the play, or with advanced GIB during both bidding and play), GIB will make different decisions with the same hand and bidding sequence. The exception is eg when playing in a robot tournament/challenge, when the random number generator is seeded to ensure that this won't happen across tables. There is also some aspect of seeding at teaching tables to ensure consistency. (Though you can work around this by rotating the deal and you'll often see GIB choose a different line.) But when playing with robots in the MBC you occasionally see variations at other tables playing with robots that go through the same sequences.

Here's a classic example: [hv=https://www.bridgebase.com/tools/handviewer.html?lin=st||pn|~~M7662zhy,~~M162hxsl,~~M25762fc,~~M678mvy3|md|1SKQTHAK3D543CA432,SAJ976HQ75D92C987,S432HJ62DKQJT6CQ6,S85HT984DA87CKJT5|sv|b|rh||ah|Board%207|mb|1N|an|notrump%20opener.%20Could%20have%205M.%20--%202-5%20!C;%202-5%20!D;%202-5%20!H;%202-5%20!S;%2015-17%20HCP;%2018-%20total%20points%20|mb|P|mb|2C|an|Stayman%20--%20%20%20|mb|P|mb|2D|an|No%20major%20suits%20--%202-5%20!C;%202-5%20!D;%202-3%20!H;%202-3%20!S;%2015-17%20HCP;%2018-%20total%20points%20|mb|P|mb|2N|an|Invite%20to%203NT,%20may%20not%20have%204-card%20major%20--%204-%20!H;%204-%20!S;%209%20HCP%20|mb|P|mb|3N|an|2-5%20!C;%202-5%20!D;%202-3%20!H;%202-3%20!S;%2015-17%20HCP;%2018-%20total%20points%20|mb|P|mb|P|mb|P|pc|S7|pc|S2|pc|S5|pc|ST|pc|D5|pc|D2|pc|DK|pc|D7|pc|DQ|pc|D8|pc|D3|pc|D9|pc|DJ|pc|DA|pc|D4|pc|C7|pc|H4|pc|HA|pc|H5|pc|H6|pc|C2|pc|C8|pc|CQ|pc|CK|pc|H9|pc|H3|pc|HQ|pc|H2|pc|H7|pc|HJ|pc|HT|pc|HK|pc|C4|pc|C9|pc|C6|pc|CT|pc|S8|pc|SK|pc|SA|pc|S3|pc|SJ|pc|S4|pc|H8|pc|SQ|pc|C3|pc|S9|pc|DT|pc|CJ|pc|C5|pc|CA|pc|S6|pc|D6|]400|300[/hv] When declarer plays a diamond at trick 2, West should obviously give count. I redealt this hand many times, varying the spot cards, and West played its lowest diamond every time (and East held up to the third round every time). But don't think this means the robots play upside down count. [hv=https://www.bridgebase.com/tools/handviewer.html?lin=st||pn|~~M2601aiy,~~M6871udi,~~M25762fc,~~M678mvy3|md|1SKQTHAK3D72CA7432,SAJ976HQ75D985C98,S432HJ62DKQJT6CQ6,S85HT984DA43CKJT5|sv|b|rh||ah|Board%20135|mb|1N|an|notrump%20opener.%20Could%20have%205M.%20--%202-5%20!C;%202-5%20!D;%202-5%20!H;%202-5%20!S;%2015-17%20HCP;%2018-%20total%20points|mb|P|mb|2C|an|Stayman%20--%20%20%20|mb|P|mb|2D|an|No%20major%20suits%20--%202-5%20!C;%202-5%20!D;%202-3%20!H;%202-3%20!S;%2015-17%20HCP;%2018-%20total%20points|mb|P|mb|2N|an|Invite%20to%203NT,%20may%20not%20have%204-card%20major%20--%204-%20!H;%204-%20!S;%209%20HCP%20|mb|P|mb|3N|an|2-5%20!C;%202-5%20!D;%202-3%20!H;%202-3%20!S;%2015-17%20HCP;%2018-%20total%20points|mb|P|mb|P|mb|P|pc|S7|pc|S2|pc|S8|pc|ST|pc|D7|pc|D5|pc|DK|pc|D3|pc|S4|pc|S5|pc|SK|pc|SA|pc|H5|pc|H6|pc|H9|pc|HA|pc|D2|pc|D8|pc|DQ|pc|DA|pc|H4|pc|H3|pc|HQ|pc|H2|pc|H7|pc|HJ|pc|HT|pc|HK|pc|C7|pc|C8|pc|CQ|pc|CK|pc|H8|pc|C3|pc|D9|pc|S3|pc|CJ|pc|C4|pc|C9|pc|C6|pc|CT|pc|CA|pc|SJ|pc|DT|pc|C2|pc|S9|pc|DJ|pc|C5|pc|D4|pc|SQ|pc|S6|pc|D6|]400|300[/hv] I had to force GIB to lead a spade here since it preferred a diamond, and South to continue with a diamond as the order of play sometimes differs, but regardless, when declarer plays diamonds, West almost* always plays low again, and East holds up until the third round. *On one occasion West GIB held 987, and played the 8. But followed up on the next round with the 9, lol. And if I sit in West's seat and play the 9 in the first example, East still holds up to the third round. So West doesn't signal, and East doesn't interpret the signal. The original developer of GIB passed it onto BBO a long time ago. But yes, it seems nobody has a clue how GIB works, or wants to spend time figuring it out. (Have offered to do this for free several times and while I was hopeful this might eventuate at one point, that hope is gone :( ) It says here that GIB does *not* give count on the opening lead, nor on discards. Of course, the rest of that paragraph has already been proven to be false. It does say it tries to give count in other situations, but this is also provably wrong as above. PS - I believe johnu's post was, as per most of them, sarcastic - signalling correctly 50% of the time and wrongly 50% of the time is equivalent to playing randomly.

The standard lead from QJ954 would actually be Q rather than 5. GIB normally follow standard leads but sometimes leads randomly and nobody knows why. It doesn't provide any useful signals ever. According to the system notes it's meant to signal in some situations, but does this so inconsistently that it's impossible to get any meaningful information from this. See here for some analysis of both situations. Advanced GIB only differs in the fact it simulates more hands and occasionally simulates during the bidding as well to deviate from the basic GIB bid.

That's what I was saying - if he has 2 you still make if one ace is the club, or partner has K♣, or they find the wrong lead - all three combined looks like good odds for a slam compared to simply stopping in 4 and I can't see a more scientific way of figuring out what partner has. But yes, three aces does pose a little problem :) I guess technically 6♦ would 3 show aces after which you can bid 7♠, but it's such a rare convention you'd both have to be on the same page.