smerriman

Sure; you well know that the descriptions and how GIB bids aren't often related though. GIB will never be bidding 2♥ with 11 points, regardless of what it says.

So the director agrees there is UI, and thinks a logical alternative is blatant use of that UI? New director, please.

Well, you said it yourself; the robot is not suggesting game. 2H = non invitational hand with 54 in the majors. 3H = non invitational with 55 in the majors, as you could have 2 spades and 3 hearts. Your options are to pass or correct; 3nt doesn't exist to the robot which is where things really went off the rails. (OK, the description of 6+♥ and 5-♠ makes no sense.)

GIB doesn't play Bergen. It plays invitational jump shifts (which is common at expert level too, though GIB doesn't play them very well). If you looked the description of the bid you would have seen this.

If you place 4th place overall, you get a prize worth $15BB, which is the minimum you need to pay just to qualify. It's clearly not *not* about the money :) But if you've ever played Robot Rebate - where you pay $1BB and need a 55% score to get $1.50BB back - you'll find that it's considerably *harder* to score well against 1 or 2 other players, compared to a bigger field. At least, that's my experience, and I've seen other forum posts saying similar.

Odd indeed. The 2♦ part isn't even simulation based (5♦ on is); basic GIB defines 2NT as a max of 14 HCP and apparently thinks that's a worse rule to break.

South appears to be claiming they they would have beaten the contract by not leading a heart. I'm struggling to see how the lead makes any difference at all; whether or not they'll take 10 tricks appears to be fully down to the later play. But given South got the correct explanation, the whole argument seems moot in the first place.

The CC and West's bidding clearly shows South received the correct explanation, so South's argument about the lead is silly. How exactly did they manage to take 10 tricks though?

I'm not a fan of reversing with 1444; there was a long debate about it in the primer on reverse bidding where mikeh was strongly against it. But having done so, assuming you are playing 2NT as weakness as per that primer, 3♣ to me is a pretty rare response - GF but denying 5 spades (would continue with 2♠ instead), 3 diamonds, or 4 hearts. Some of those hands might bid 3NT, but regardless, we must have a club fit, so I'm continuing with 4♣.

The above points are all very good when it comes to humans. But given you mentioned robots, just to add a fourth point - while GIB does have the void responses mentioned in point 1 above, it regularly launches into RKCB way earlier than it should due to having poor control bidding logic (ie it fails at points 2 and 3). So if you're missing slams due to the 4NT bid, there's a decent chance its the robot's fault.

What helene_t said :) TylerE and Stephen Tu appear to have misunderstood the question. While robots can go off system at times when they're stuck, I've never seen a robot bid 1♠ over a 1♥ overall with 4 cards, given double is always available. So I'm guessing you have indeed mixed this up with 1♦ overcalls, which is a different situation as described above.

I'd really prefer a 4th spade for that. If I do bid 2♥ and get a 2♠ response, 4♦ would be perfect then. But other sequences could potentially get awkward.

Exactly the same here (but in Firefox); hitting enter also flashes the password, and on rare occasions it has been visible when I come back (but I don't log in elsewhere). Password should never become visible.

If the system being played was illegal, as SB claimed, then surely they were damaged by the fact their opponents reached and made a grand slam that they wouldn't if playing a legal system. But it seems pretty ludicrous to rule that the system was an agreement and not just a result of cluelessness, based on the fact it would have led to a disaster in the other 99% of cases.

Being a nige1 hand, all the remaining spots being edited to minimum values shows the ten of spades must be the key :) I guess we can try stripping the diamonds, drawing trumps, cashing the Ace of spades and exiting a club, hoping the spades are blocked. [edit]Hmm, just realised the subject line is probably important too.. [edit2]Slight improvement would be not cashing the Ace of spades.. [edit3]Aah, or we can duck a spade. OK, I'll stop editing now and think about it later :)

That was precisely the reason I said you would have to be the one to do the tests yourself. If anyone else did, myself included, you're probably not going to believe them. Am I biased towards believing the hands are random? Yes, absolutely, given the immense number of tests I have done over the years, and the fact I don't believe it's possible for BBO to bias them. I won't deny that at all. I still decided to look at your hands in an attempt to be as unbiased as possible, and am honestly perplexed at where variance could come from in the hands I listed as flat.

How about just not hitting reset score? I believe this is what wipes the previous boards, and it's not too difficult to quickly tot them up via the history tab at the end. To be honest, it's usually better, since sometimes it takes some time for boards to be played at other tables, so the longer they're up, the more accurate the scores will be.

Yes, it's 100% intentional that humans or robots aren't placed in the East and West seats. If the table wasn't set up correctly, you wouldn't see a bidding box. I specifically told you, since you failed to understand the screenshot: Having robots or humans in the E/W seats is illogical when using this setting (it's not even possible to place humans in those seats; the interface disables it). This has worked for many years, up until early this year.

Sigh. Read my message again. Or don't, since you're having so much difficulty understanding it. It's a clear bug; it has worked perfectly fine for many years, it's 100% replicable by doing what I mentioned above rather than the unrelated things that you are doing, has been noticed by others, and it would be nice to get fixed by BBO. No need for more help on your end.

This is nothing to do with prime. It's an HTML z-index bug at a bidding table when Opponents' bidding is set to Controlled by host and robots (or humans that aren't you) are in the N/S seats, as I demonstrated in my screenshot.

This is still broken. Others on BW mention having reported it to the BBO support in early February with no response. It really seems like nothing gets fixed on BBO these days..

By the way, I looked at the hands you posted. You're saying set 1 was from an IMPs challenge, where hands are biased to make them have more IMP variance? Board 1 - both beginners and experts alike would take a flat 10 tricks. No decisions to be made. Board 2 - given the friendly trump break, both beginners and experts alike would take a flat 11 tricks. No decisions to be made. Board 4 - given the club lead, both beginners and experts alike would take a flat 9 tricks. No decisions to be made. I guess it's possible an absolute beginner might find a way to go down 3 on board 3, but everyone else should go down 2 and score a fraction of an IMP at most. As for the MP set: Board 1 - no decisions Board 2 - after the first two tricks I guess the only decision is how to play trumps, but it turns out everything you try works equally, so no variance Board 4 - again there's only one way to play this at any form of scoring Board 3 appears to be the only one of the 8 boards where you actually have anything to think about.. still looks pretty flat but even if there's a bit of variance, it'll affect both forms of scoring equally. Perhaps it wasn't the greatest example for demonstrating your point :) If you're no longer looking at variance, but think that the chances of a game being makeable is more likely in IMPs than MPs (you referred to the number of games and partscores, rather than variance), then that can be analysed.. but let's stick to one thing at a time.

I can't - barmar has a script set up that emails me results by participants during BBO events, but not in general.

To be fair, given the way you said 'obvious' and 'clear difference', the most logical interpretation was that you believed you would continue to be able to see such a difference, even if you didn't specifically state it. Though, you actually did, as far as I can tell, when you said: It's not a magic trick, but if there were *any* discernable difference at all, the above test would prove or disprove it - even if you can't predict every single one, you would be able to perform significantly better than statistics would indicate if random. If you can, you've convinced me. If you can't, then you can at least conclude that your 'intensified suspicions' that raised 'the strong possibility' based on what you thought were discernable differences were all cognitive errors. The main reason I stopped playing MP + IMP daylongs a while ago was because the number of flat boards made it futile in aiming for a top score - I found it too frustrating that they were largely dependent on luck vs skill (the complete opposite of your experience). But you're right; a one-off example doesn't prove or disprove anything; a large set does for the reasons mentioned above.

Done properly, it is entirely scientific. If I give you 100 sets, 50 that came from IMPs tournaments, and 50 that came from MP tournaments, and you only identify 50% of them, it completely disproves your statement that the difference is obvious. If you are able to even correct predict, say 70 of the 100 (and you're claiming you'd be able to tell far more than that), that is enough proof for me to show that you are correct, as the probability that happens by chance is negligable.