smerriman

4 cards in a minor are plenty. If the hearts and diamonds were flipped it would be a slightly trickier decision; then it's a case of deciding the best lie (or having 2♣ being more artificial).

IMO, after 1♣ (1♦) 1N (P), 4N is pretty much undefined, rather than quantitative or Blackwood. If you have a balanced hand that wants to play 6N opposite a maximum 1N, surely you were too strong for 1♣..

As I mentioned in that thread - or at least, what I intended; perhaps I didn't specify well enough - I was referring to the algorithm that decides whether there is a 100% single dummy line that allows guarantees the human takes (at least) that number of tricks. Given the number of issues with GIB's double dummy play/simulation, I'm amazed by how flawless the single dummy algorithm is. The UI for conceding by default is something that has been broken for years; there have been numerous requests (including my own) for this to be fixed that have just gone ignored. I'm not sure why SB brought up the fact the robot accepted immediately though; as was brought up in the other thread, the robot does not accept/reject claims when it has a human partner. Even if it did, the claim needs to be accepted by both players on BBO. So his real argument is that he accepted himself, and apparently was within his rights to do so. Edit - actually, as far as I'm aware, that UI issue is only when playing fully against robots. So RR must have just misclicked the number.

Most of the robot-based tournaments on the website - daylongs, challenges, etc - are human declares, which means if you become dummy you automatically swap seats with the robot so that you can declare yourself. Most also force the human to have the best hand, which means you are likely to declare more often. If you're playing in one of the casual rooms with rented robots, there is no setting to emulate this. You can manually repeat some of the conditions, like removing the robot and moving to its seat, or adjusting the table settings to restrict the type of hands dealt. Or just hit redeal if you become dummy. But nothing automatic.

Given the TD needs to adjudicate anyway, how is providing additional information to base the decision on creating extra work? (Not saying that argumentatively; I don't know how TDing works, so maybe there is something that makes it harder). Quote from barmar: "BBO was designed for more casual play, rigid adherence to the Laws was not a priority." I do not believe in the slightest the ability to concede was an error by an incompetent programmer. Robot subs were introduced to prevent the hassles around waiting for + dealing with human subs, and I suspect if you ask anyone that plays with robots intentionally, their main reason will be wanting a quick game. No, I meant exactly what I wrote; I believe BBO's claiming algorithm is about as perfect as it can get. It's basically the only aspect of GIB that I find faultless. You seem to be all over the place in this thread - first implying you can tell that a robot with a human partner didn't reject a claim (you can't), then stating a robot would reject a claim based on its holding (it doesn't), and now we seem to have changed topic entirely and are saying robots should deny claims where there is a 100% winning line. It really sounds like you've played very little with robots - as for me, I'm perfectly happy with their claiming system and definitely would not want this to be changed.

Again, that's not true in the slightest; it works as I described above, and has nothing to do with what type of bot you're using. Have played (and claimed) with robots for a long period of time. It is designed as such to make it completely impossible to achieve deception of the form mentioned in your story. The only way it is exploitable is eliminating memory lapses - eg if you're forgotten whether one of your two remaining cards is high, you can claim a trick and see if it accepts. This is obviously not ideal, but far better than the type of situations you're describing, which will never happen, and about the best you could ever do with robots, who will never be able to interpret claim statements. There are many laws that are broken on BBO; robots are primarily there to speed things up; if a human wants to concede and get on with the next hand, they are free to do so, even if it's against the laws of bridge.

Also, for that matter, it is not true that GIB accepts the claim if the best single-dummy line lands the contract. GIB accepts if the best single-dummy line lands the contract against all possible opponent hands, even the ones not currently held. That's why eg, if you hold AKQJx vs xxx in trumps and all you have to do is draw them to take the rest of the tricks, it will reject if you claim instantly; only accepting after you draw the first one and both follow, even if the trumps split 3-2. So even if GIB did play a part in the claim, it would never reject/accept based on what it holds; only what declarer knows it holds. And that's how any robot should work, whether it's GIB or a fictional North London advanced robot.

If you claim against a human and robot, the robot does not take part, as shyams mentioned.

GIB just doesn't know how to bid freak hands. I think I've posted in the past that it won't even get there with 13 solid spades.

Choose the 'Permission required to play' setting.

My favourite was the time GIBs description promised 5 spades, 5 hearts, and 5 clubs. Open sourcing GIB has been something I've wished for for a long time, but BBO have sadly said they won't do it, despite the fact it would no doubt result in huge (and free) improvements. Perhaps when it gets replaced with Argine, they'll reconsider for old time's sake.

To be fair, you're posting in a thread which was complaining about hand bias, you directly said "there seems to be a bias against East", and "it is substantial if only the sessions I have played were counted". If the purpose of you posting was to demonstrate perfectly normal results and not in any way suggest bias, it was an odd way of going about it.

http://kwbridge.com/preempts.htm is a very good summary of the 'standard' defense, including leaping Michaels.

Congrats broze! Definitely leading the way with a third challenge event win now.

That's not really possible; change.org is very well known and does not allow the petition starter access to your emails.

I've done numerous analyses of the distributions on BBO and always get exactly the same results; they're completely normal.

Wow, a real-life criss-cross squeeze. Nice hand. Still recoverable after the first two tricks, if you assume GIB won't lead low from 43 (which it doesn't do 98% of the time).

GIB's book bid is to pass 2♥. So there's really no bug to fix here; if GIB simulated a number of hands and the result for those hands was that dbl and 4S worked out better on average, then it worked out better on average. Those sims can always lead to unusual situations; if probability states that a finesse works 55% of the time and a drop works 45% of the time, then a large number of times a sim will tell GIB to play for a drop. Given the simplistic nature of GIBs points-based bidding rules the reasons for its other bids seem pretty obvious and easy to imagine programming wise, even if they're wrong.

This is not a valid reason; responsive design / progressive enhancement / whatever you want to call it never should or needs to disadvantage desktop users for mobile users' sakes or vice versa, even when sharing the same codebase. The actual reason seems more to be the HTML version had to be rushed out due to the demise of Flash, so still has a long way to go before becoming a proper desktop solution.

Equally, I wonder why so many people keep posting the same question without checking to see if it has been asked before :) (Dozens of times wouldn't be an exaggeration). Barmar usually goes through once in a while and copies the same response into all, but for now see eg https://www.bridgebase.com/forums/topic/82702-casual-explained/ for the best response.

I can't access the hand (BBO admins could) - there seem to be a few missing elements in your story (you said two passes then LHO opened and then GIB bid 2NT) - I'm guessing you meant your RHO opened, you doubled, and your partner responded 2NT, something like this: [hv=https://www.bridgebase.com/tools/handviewer.html?lin=st||pn|human,~~M631s9t9,~~M1562g1y,~~M5303sle|md|2SK7HADQ64CAKQJ973,S52HQJT542DJTCT64,SA63H986DA983C852,SQJT984HK73DK752C|sv|b|rh||ah|Board%2036|mb|P|mb|P|mb|2S|an|Weak%20two%20bid%20--%201-4%20!C;%201-3%20!D;%201-3%20!H;%206+%20!S;%206-10%20HCP;%207+%20total%20points%20|mb|D|an|3-5%20!C;%203-5%20!D;%203-4%20!H;%202-%20!S;%2013+%20total%20points|mb|P|mb|2N!|an|Lebensohl%20-%20Forces%203C%20by%20partner%20--%209-%20total%20points%20|mb|P|mb|3C|an|Transfer%20completed%20--%203-5%20!C;%203-5%20!D;%203-4%20!H;%202-%20!S;%2013-18%20total%20points|mb|P|mb|3D|an|4+%20!D;%209-%20total%20points%20|mb|P|mb|5C|an|5-%20!C;%203-5%20!D;%203-4%20!H;%202-%20!S;%20biddable%20!C;%2013-18%20total%20points|mb|P|mb|5D|an|4+%20!D;%209-%20total%20points%20|mb|P|mb|P|mb|P|]400|300[/hv] I see nothing wrong with the lebensohl bid, given North is a passed hand. 3♣ looks to be a big underbid; I would have broken the lebensohl transfer and just bid 3NT. Having not broken the transfer, 3♦ should be a signoff, so 5♣ is simply undefined - you risk anything happening when you make undefined bids. GIB is in general horrible when it comes to offshape doubles, though I'd say the fault lies with you here.

North bidding the same way with a 14 count and an 18 count seems a bit too wide a range, so I agree with Stephen Tu about 2♠. You're right that a cue by opener might be looking for a stopper, and you can treat it as that initially, but that's not the only meaning; it could be any game forcing hand which doesn't know how to proceed yet. You find out which later.

The more you play with robots, the more you'll find they do this because they're very bad, not because they're very good.

hrothgar's BW poll voting makes for interesting viewing.