strags

I don't like the across-the-board price increases for tournaments, but I do get it. Expenses are up and BBO needs revenue to keep pace. However, increasing the rake on Reward games (both Daylongs and the $1/$5 Robot Race games) from 20% to 30% is........bad. Really, really bad. Like, state lottery territory bad, which is the laughingstock of games of chance. Come on now. If you need to raise the entry fee to $1.25, I think most of us would understand and support you. But, a 30% take really kneecaps folks like me, who enjoy playing the RR games to make maybe 75 cents a day, which I then spend on a couple of Daylong games. That's now impossible. Please reconsider this.

OK, granted I missed a NV game. However, making 2♦ with two overtricks on a 3-1 fit was rewarding in its own odd way. Some background: this arose in a Robot Reward game, hence the (intended) 1♦ opening bid rather than 1NT. The goal is to make your much-faster robot partner the declarer as often as possible. Only after dummy came down with 10 points did I realize that I had misclicked and accidentally opened a weak 2♦. There's not much to the play; the best the bots could do was hold it to nine tricks; however, the sight of robot West drawing "my" last trump with his six-spot, only to collect his partner's three, was amusing. (BTW, I also went for -1100 in a phantom sacrifice. Despite all of these brain cramps, very undeservingly, I won the race.) https://tinyurl.com/y5578654

If you play the Robot Tournaments almost exclusively, as I do, and you suspect that significantly more than half of your finesses lose in those games...you're correct. In fact, one longtime friend and I have a running joke where we will often mention whimsically in our conversations, "Hey, did I tell you that a finesse worked for me on BBO the other day?" But it has nothing to do with faulty software or unrealistic deal probabilities. It's simply a function of two perfectly innocent factors: The "Best Hand for South" format The opening-lead tendencies of the BBO bots Put simply: if you're playing a Robot Tournament, you're sitting South and are dealt the best hand at the table. Therefore, you are more likely than your robot North partner to (a) become declarer, and (b) hold high-card tenace positions like AQ or KJ in which you wish to take a finesse. Ergo, you will be taking these finesses disproportionately into the West hand. And, West will disproportionally happen to be the opening leader. BBO bots are notoriously passive leaders. That much, I hope everyone agrees on. This is hardly surprising, since there have been a raft of books published in the last 10 years that have analyzed opening lead probabilities and concluded that passive is usually better. Indeed, the one counterexample those books have shown is to lead very aggressively (i.e., away from a king or queen) in a side suit against a small suit slam. And, in my experience, that's also the one time a BBO bot can be counted on to have led away from a royal. So...in BBO Robot Tournament games, West is usually on opening lead. West will lead very passively, usually from a suit in which he holds no honor above a 10. You will more often finesse (in some other suit) through East and into West because of the "Best Hand" format. Ergo, it's more likely -- I'd wager between 55% and 60% -- that these finesses will lose. There's nothing sinister about this. It's just a consequence of the unusual form of bridge we enjoy on BBO.

Wow. For real? Are they going to shut down Words With Friends popular nightly trivia contest then, because that offers cash prizes? Seems like quite a double standard, because the BBO games only award BBO$. Anyway, thanks for the info. Very disappointed (and stunned) to hear about that.

Folks: Is there a reason that I can no longer see all of the Robot Tournaments available on BBO via my Android app? See screenshot -- that's the full extent of Robot games I see on the app, after all the Daylongs are listed up top. No Robot Reward ($1 or $5), no Robot Rebate 55%, no Bingo Reward, etc. Those games aren't offered at all on the app but are available in the desktop version. This behavior only started happening Monday or Tuesday of this week. I just updated the app this morning so I am running the latest version.