smerriman

While GIB is pretty bad, I would be willing to bet you were at fault here. Normally happens when the human misunderstands the system / doesn't read the definitions and continually makes cuebids thinking they're natural, which GIB is forced to remove.

Yes, it has been mentioned in the forum countless times. Just change the settings to 'Permission required to play'.

Yup, that's why I'm rather surprised it existed for the OP - unless it really did promise diamond support and they missed that in the description, which'd somewhat help explain why it was so keen on diamonds. (In fact, given they said the 3♥ bid showed 6+ hearts, that probably implies 2♥ showed 5, which is an even stronger suggestion this was a support jump shift).

Agreed, but I strongly dislike that system too :P Every time a partner tries that type of weak jump shift, I always seem to have the opening hand where I wish they hadn't. By a passed hand there simply seems no need.

If 2♥ simply shows 9-11 HCP with a long suit, that's a rather odd use of the bid. You have 1♥ to show that hand; normally a bid that takes up so much bidding space needs to be much more tightly defined (eg many would play it as promising diamond support as well as the hearts). Otherwise you're making it harder for both of you to continue bidding. This hand is also a good reason why you should play RKCB; the diamond king is too valuable to not find out about until the 6 level.

Putting aside the odd 2NT bid, the explanation for 4♣ is that GIB doesn't understand how to bid.

Who knows. Swap the diamond jack for a queen and it bids 3NT over 2NT; take away a point and it's bidding 2NT instead of 4sf. In fact, it seems like it will never bid 3NT directly over 1♠. I guess there's a 13 point hole in the bidding database.

And likewise, in the first case, isn't it possible North has Qx of hearts and a second diamond, where ducking costs a trick?

Just to play the usual devil's advocate, from GIB's perspective, isn't it possible that you hold Qx of clubs? In which case ducking costs a trick.

Really? Unless I'm missing something, that part is pretty obvious and has been posted about many times in the forum (you've even posted about it yourself). While playing the trump is obviously stupid, on every layout of the opponent's cards, playing the trump will result in +1 double dummy. Playing the diamond won't (if East has Axx of clubs). Basic GIB isn't distinguishing plays that require future knowledge from plays which don't. That type of logic is what the GIBson part of the advanced robot is meant to fix.

Well, you can tell that by looking at the username before the first trick :P Obviously, GIB's play in general is bad, I doubt anyone denies that. The question was figuring out a possible reason why it goes down.

It was a very nice hand, yes. But a very nice hand where there's no downside to opening 1♣ - you'll be able to force by reversing or jump shifting into hearts next bid, showing both your pattern and your strength at the same time, so you'll never miss game/slam when it's on (or end in grand when it's not).

By illegal I mean, at least in the ACBL, you actually aren't *allowed* to open it 2♣. Not sure what the regulations are in Australia.

If you forgot you were playing with GIB, you also forgot that 2♣ would be completely illegal with anyone but GIB :) But yes, after the opening GIB should bid slower, but there's no chance even a human North would stop short of grand here.

This is deplorable behavior. You're not only ruining the game for your two opponents, but every single other table who get dealt that hand. With the small number of times a hand gets dealt, one idiot who bids 7NT or passes with strong hands has a significant impact on the scores, and is just as bad if not worse than the person who was impolite.

Was this MPs or IMPs? Obviously, at IMPs, it would be a mistake. But at MPs, GIB will go for the club finesse every time. Of the 15 possible layouts after trick 9, playing on clubs gains on 10 of them (where West has the club ace), ties in 1 (when East had ace to 3 clubs) and only loses in 4 (when East had ace to 4).

Right - wasn't saying that it's not possible for there to be hands where you'll miss game. Just that there are many more games you'll miss because of the failure of the robot to balance. Given everyone who didn't pass sounds like they found game, I'm pretty confident it'll be due to the latter.

I'll leave the comments on whether to bid or pass to others, but if you passed and were making game, I'd say its highly likely your partner made a terrible bid. (Which, if this was GIB, is very likely, since it doesn't understand balancing auctions, or the important points in Karen's page about adding an ace / stretching to compete with shortness in their suit).

As long as you're aware that it's how GIB's system works, and *not* how 2/1 in general works. Perhaps it's a good way of getting started if you're not ready to play with humans, but you'll need to unlearn a significant amount if you want to start playing actual 2/1 with humans. I sense you sometimes mix them up a little when you provide a GIB auction and give it as an example of why 2/1 is restrictive - whereas in reality, 2/1 works perfectly fine, it's just GIB's version that doesn't. I think GIB is a valuable learning tool - but only if you approach it from the perspective of "how should the bidding have gone", not "what should I have bid with GIB". And most importantly, do this on hands where you get to the right contract, not just the wrong ones - as mistakes in those auctions with GIB can result in bad habits that can deteriorate your game the most (such as contemplating jumping to 3NT, which would kill a human partnership but can often be right with GIB).

I assume you're referring to purchasing them within the mobile app. The app stores charge fees for purchases which is outside of BridgeBase's control. Purchase them here instead: https://www.bridgebase.com/purchase/pay.php

This is just standard GIB. It makes assumptions based on the bidding, and never deviates from them. It knows that West is 'guaranteed' to have the spade queen for the double, and thus it can't tell the difference between playing the king and the jack - it sees them as equals. Likewise, in the second example, it doesn't understand Multi, and assumes West has a weak two in diamonds and East a strong hand with hearts. That of course is ludicrous but its whole play engine is based around it, so it's really not unexpected tnat it would go haywire.

To avoid cheating, different players get dealt different hands (each hand is dealt a limited number of times so you're only compared to the small set who played it). There is nothing you can do about this; if you get dealt flat hands, you will finish well down the leaderboard no matter if you achieved the top score on every hand.

This has been done to death. They're random. You're wrong.

If you want to go one step further on 'hard to imagine' - where you could always conjure up a reason that GIB miraculously simulated the only hands where its play made no difference - here's an example from 3.5 years ago where GIB made a literal 0% play, where any simulation of >= 1 hand would guarantee a better line. The programmers just don't seem to be capable of looking at or adjusting the play code.

For me forcing and forcing one round are technically identical, but I don't consider them redundant - it's all about context. For example, if partner opens 1♦, then if I had to describe a 1♠ response, it would simply be a forcing bid. It would also be true to describe it as forcing one round, but there's simply no reason for me to do so. On the other hand, after 1♦ - 1♠ - 2♥, I would describe 3♦ as game forcing, and 2♠ as 'forcing one round', even though forcing is also accurate. This is to convey the idea that 2♠ might be weak or strong, and we can stop short of game in the former case.