smerriman

I do find it rather amusing that despite the large majority of users complaining about how bad the robots are, there are still a minority who claim they must be cheating! I - and anyone else experienced with the robots - can guarantee you there is 0% chance they have unauthorized knowledge. They do have significant flaws, but I'd still do better with one than the majority of pickup partners on BBO, so it's not surprising they perform well when compared to certain groups of humans. The reason they the majority of the leads is pretty clearly detailed in Bird/Anthias' book. There's an odd exception when they make highly unusual leads that even that book couldn't explain, but the analysis that I did of these showed 80% of them failed miserably.

Perhaps, though since you have to pay for $BB, it's considerably easier for BBO to detect this by checking the payment method. Given it still uses deal pooling, you'd also still need to have a considerable number of accounts before getting a serious benefit out of playing the same tournament. And since you can't "cash out" the $BB, are you really gaining much by doing so?

For what it's worth, that would make the robots far, far, far worse.

Also, the Zenith daylong which was added very recently is now much more appealing than Robot Rebate, given the larger number of boards and entries (and returns). It's definitely possible for better players to make some gains off that one.

Robot Rebate is extremely hard to make a profit off, given you have to make the cut 2/3 of the tournaments you enter, and 55% isn't easy even if you have an edge over the field. Looking at my stats it appears I'm only making it 1/3 of the time (played 522, won 174), not even close to breaking even. (There are much better players at these than me though.) As for Robot Reward, that one is definitely possible (though it involves significantly different tactics to normal bridge). I received a $10 BB gift about 2.5 years ago, and was up $148 a month later (have since lost about half of that, probably mainly due to those Robot Rebates :( ). I'm finding it a little more difficult now given the demise of the quick Flash version though. I think Leo Lasota is the most famous at being able to profit off the robots.

I was thinking the same, since GIB so often frustratingly avoids cuebidding with minimums. But it appears in this sequence, even basic GIB will cuebid 4♣ if you take away a queen to leave it with just 15 HCP.

It really depends on your timezone. Some times of the day you don't see more than a few; other times I've seen 15-20 in a single Robot Rebate.

Those are definitely two ways 6H can be better than 6N, but even combined surely there are going to be more occasions when you take the same number of tricks in both strains, where 6H is worse. A super basic double dummy analysis of 500 hands (North any 5332, 4332, 4432 with 15-17, 4+♥, Q♥, A♣, K♦, no K♣) gives 6N way on top compared to 6H (16 deals both slams down, 6H scores better on 127 occasions, 6N scores better on 357 occasions). It also has 7H making 55% of the time, for what it's worth. As always, make what you will of double dummy analysis.

Transfer? There was no transfer; this was Stayman. A 5N response to the queen ask shows the queen without any kings.

Based on plenty of earlier threads on this topic, the response you're likely to get from BBO is that your profile isn't meant to be used for conventions. That's all very well and good, but it's what a significant majority of players without dedicated partners use in the BBO because there isn't a better alternative (a proper discussion via chat is never viable given the number of players who come and go). So it is surprising a better option hasn't been introduced, but given the number of issues with the software right now and the number of years this went unchanged before the software change, I wouldn't count on changes any time soon.

Clearly neither of you have ever played with the robots :) This is easily the best auction you'll get with their system.

Interesting. A while back I read this article on opening 1♣ with 4432, which ends with: I found its logic quite compelling, but perhaps it is misguided. I can see how it could be beneficial if playing something like transfer Walsh though as described above.

I'm not sure what the obvious reasons for excluding 1NT were, since it seems an obvious 1NT to me.

Total points is rarely played by anyone - it isn't scored duplicate, so the scores are pretty meaningless and there are no other tables to be compared to. You may possibly be able to see some hands after logging into BBO if you go to the History tab under Recent Hands where it shows the last 50 you played - though it's possible they're not stored there either; I've never played Total Points so I wouldn't know - but otherwise there is no way to access them. You could always just play a normal IMPs format if you want to access the hands later (and add up the total points by hand if you want to see who was lucky enough to be dealt the better ones..)

Is it possible you've been playing Total Points rather than IMPs or MPs? That's another option that gets excluded from MyHands, given there's no comparisons.

But note that not all hands show up there, such as ACBL virtual club games. So it depends what you've been playing in.

It was in update 32.0.0.371 which was released last August. But perhaps you're well out of date. To be honest, despite how slow the new version is, I'd rather lose money in the Robot Race than keep old versions of Flash like that installed.

It may still be at that URL, but good luck finding a browser that is capable of loading it. Adobe built in the kill switch many months ago.

Robot games are stratified, so if you're in the A or B group, someone in the C group might finish below you and get awarded (more) points. See here.

They've pretty much designed it for a mobile device and the desktop version has suffered because of it (rather than through proper use of progressive enhancement). Proper responsiveness needs planning in advance, so I suspect that the rush job in getting it out has meant improving it now is going to be considerably harder.

No. This isn't anything to do with BBO - it's impossible to use Flash on any website.

Um, have re-read it and it still seems to be exactly what he is asking..? He asked how a score of 19.2 to 9.0 in the History tab transfers to the box at the top left which appeared to show a 20.4 IMP lead. But if you have another interpretation, feel free to share :)

NS +10.2 means North/South is winning by 10.2 IMPs. EW -10.2 means East/West is losing by 10.2 IMPs. One is superfluous, but they both mean the same thing.

The opening post was 17 years ago, so whatever it was, it's probably not too relevant now :) As for rlohman's post, it is random; you like many others just don't understand what random and normal actually mean.

Are you sure you didn't just miss an earlier paragraph somewhere explaining those bids? See eg this or this which both have exactly what you described, but with the two missing bids also included.