jeigh

Declarer's lucky robot didn't re-correct to 7 clubs. Or more.

Just to be clear, I wasn't accusing GIB of cheating. That would be illogical, since nobody could gain from that unless they were betting on GIB against me! I just find its play so preposterously inconsistent that it's very uncomfortable trying to play against. For instance, whether those are leads that fail or not, they make it feel absolutely pointless for me to try to defend a hand or, often, declare one. If I'm going to fail miserably, I want it to be against a reliable opponent so I can learn something. Past few years, BBO certainly hasn't felt as if it was one. And it's pretty much no fun at all anymore. (If I played with/against humans anymore, I imagine I'd be one of the pick-up partners who'd cause you to do worse than a robot, and you have all my sympathy for that :rolleyes: .)

My usual caveat - not all that much of a bridge player. I rather suspect a large portion of the robots' success is that for players at my level, it's next to impossible to play against someone who psychs as often as not. Or seems to. Or seems to be clueless and random, whether it is or not. Or to play *with* someone like that. For me, the only thing worse than the bidding (which is sometimes off by as much as 8-10 points from its own explanation) is the tendency of leading and carding that could only logically come from knowing what's in its partner's hand - K lead in a random suit would suggest, against a fair opponent using standard carding, that you can play the left-side hand for the Q absent obvious reasons otherwise (stiff in partner's suit, or partner has converted your takeout, etc.) But GIB near-*constantly* leads K from Kx. Just feels to me, true or not, like E and W are often in cahoots and playing double-dummy. I *never* get killer leads or even logical ones, nor any sensible carding, from GIB when it's my *partner* and we're on defense. Never. And, of course, we already know there can be no card in my hand that I can play to influence GIB to make a sensible next move. Because of its complete inability to pretend to think or to follow any common, standard or even learnable method, I can't trust it at all. *That*, I suspect, is why the robots do so well. Frustrating enough that I've pretty nearly given up on bridge altogether. From what I see around, I believe lots of others feel the same. I'm sure the folks at BBO are real proud of that.

Noted again, and thanks. With not a small amount of dread, I'll try it next time and make note of what happens. Thanks all, appreciate both the lesson and the conversation. I still can't appreciate GIB much though.

This is a fair point, of course (and I defer to everyone else here vis. bridge knowledge and particularly, GIB system knowledge.) If I know partner has 3 spades, and can't instead be, say, preferring with 2 weak cards, I don't need to brag about my diamonds and can probably just hammer out 4S. I would just have trouble believing GIB would support spades with 3 weak cards if I might have made the bid with 4 weak spades.

Noted, and probably I should have, in spite of my very strong expectations that GIB would misrepresent something else later in the auction. I'm not sure how I can show a good second suit (specifically diamonds) if I've already bid 2C NMF and GIB has re-bid hearts, possibly showing 5 weakish cards in my shortest suit. At some point, I'm going to be showing my diamond length and values at the 4 level in a hand that might have belonged in 3S or 3NT. Correct me if I'm wrong, but NMF is invitational at best, much less game force (opening quality hand opposite an opener.) I suppose I could have just ignored my 5-card spade suit and bid 2D first. At least I force game, and GIB will keep bidding hearts up to the 8 level thinking I can't really have spades B-) .

Could be, and it's probably me - I haven't played bridge with other people in over 30 years, though I play a lot of solitaire here and watch a lot of experts and near-experts play. And I look at the explanations when they exist, which they often don't. I don't in any way pretend to be up on this. But this didn't strike me as a place where NMF applies. I guess it might, but I assumed after GIB started with 1H, rather than a minor, and then preferred my spades over my diamonds, that 3C would confirm spades and be a cue or it would confirm short hearts. It may not apply anymore, but I always learned that in this case, re-bidding my diamonds showed extra strength/length in diamonds, to give partner a better understanding before settling on a suit. The "extra" component opposite an opening bid, I assumed, would force a further bid. I probably stand corrected, but I don't stand any happier with the system.

Appreciate all your points. I'll keep an eye out for that club bid; I've played enough solitaire here that I'm pretty sure I'd have recognized it if there was an explanation that went with it, so I'm guessing the system uses the bid but doesn't explain it. I may have just missed it, though. I really strongly dislike this system, and regret that a system that looks highly contrived and filled with gaps and widgets for workarounds should be the required standard of the many thousands of us from all over the world and all over time to be stuck with. You or others may disagree, but to me, this is a camel system - camel being the result of trying to design a horse by committee. I can't imagine it being a useful thing to many people to spend that much time learning the nooks and crannies of the system unless one would *ever* want to play that system with human partners. I wouldn't. Obviously, it's entirely likely some would. It seems really short-sighted that any large-scale organization would bank its entire world on a ridiculously complicated and unintuitive system, when there are so many really easy and intuitive ones it could use instead. Especially when there are such huge gaps in its game anyway - why subject everyone to a bidding system that requires a ton of time to learn or a bunch of guessing to use, and then completely ignore defense, carding, etc?

P.S. I really do appreciate you taking the time to discuss this.

This suggests that GIB has 3 spades. Turned out it did, but it would have bid exactly the same, I think, with two tiny spades and three mid-range diamonds. At least, I'm pretty sure that's what I see it do. I suppose I could/should bid clubs in that situation. I'm pretty sure when I've tried that on other occasions, GIB has gotten real excited about clubs, which I would in this hand have been bidding with a doubleton. I also suppose that I really have a strong dislike for this system even on the rare occasions when GIB bids and explains it accurately. Seems about half the time, it's not possible to find a bid to describe my hand that GIB will understand and react to. Good ol' SAYC and almost any plain wrapper 2/1 works way better at that, for me anyway. I marvel a bit at a system that leaves you with no choice but to defend hands you could have owned and made, and then is entirely random at defending. No carding, no logical choice of suit, seems more often than not no standards for which card in a suit to play. It's of no satisfaction at all to constantly make 2-3 tricks more than I deserve due to its horrific defense - I'm not trying to "win", I was hoping to sharpen and maybe even learn a bit.

I guess part of my issue is that there is often no hint - neither in the bidding nor the explanation - that GIB has entrenched a suit as trumps. Seems lately its most common explanation is "looking for an explanation." Playing solitaire anonymously - for some reason you can do all sorts of re-dos. I do this a lot because I'm not competing against anyone or anything, just would like to play a certain hand a certain way. Good practice in case I ever decide to play with/against humans again. I just had a sequence in which GIB opens a heart. I have an opening bid - stiff HK, 5 good spades (to AJT), 5 good diamonds (to AJ), 2 mid-spot clubs. I bid a spade. GIB bids 1NT and I bid 2D. GIB bids 2S. So far pretty normal. I bid 3D (extra values and enough diamonds to bid twice, seemed pretty natural to me.) GIB passes. (Yes, I'm aware it could have passed 2D too.) So I "undid" 3D and bid 4D instead - just grasping at what it could possibly be "thinking". It raised to 5D. GIB's hand was a minimum semi-balanced 3-5-2-3 with 3 perfectly reasonable spades and 2 middle diamonds. An obvious 4S game (no idea if it makes, or more to the point, if I as a non-great player would make it - I didn't bother.) To your point, either my second diamond bid was a cue bid (it'd *better* not pass) or a values bid (it'd also *better* not pass.) It wasn't a bid it could treat as a psyche and pass out of confusion, really. That is to say, I understand and agree with your point about how it's programmed, but it broke its own programming. It seems to me to do this, emphasis "seems", at least 80% of the time. We'd "agreed" on spades and it wouldn't for love or money let me evaluate its spades to determine if we had game, part score or even 3NT. I either raise spades and hope it hasn't "preferred" on 2 small spots, or I try to get it to show me something about its hand. I can't recall if in the hand I described in my initial post was about an "agreed" suit; pretty sure there wasn't one. I am dead certain there is no system in which a player would cue bid diamonds 4 times in a row, though. Says here, if it doesn't understand my bid, after the first time, its job is to STFU. Just one of a dreadful number of things that completely break any joy I used to have in this game. And with apologies to all, that's why I'm upset.

There's an easy logic here. Once the human hand has limited its value, GIB's job is to STFU. If its system is one that enables it to go what it "knows" is 3-4 levels too high, it's not the player's fault no matter what the player does. If its system allows it to bid up from a "drop dead" part score to the 7 level against a limited overcall or opener on a five card suit to one lesser honour, then it's a system not worth understanding. (Human here, who is not a particularly great player, *always* reads the definitions, when there are some, and is never amazed to discover that GIB is usually anywhere from 3-4 to *10-12* points above or below its own definition.) Apart from all its play shortcomings, such as its propensity to lead Q from Qx in a random suit, to have no concept of carding or signaling, to usually play the worst possible card from its hand on defense ... its bidding seems even worse. Sorry if there's attitude here. In the past few years since I started playing solitaire here, the game has degraded from fun to painfully useless. I don't know who's trying to "fix" or "improve" things, but they've created something that is a bit heartbreaking out of something that was once a lot of fun.

I have had the robot take me out of a perfectly viable 3D partscore and argue me up to *SEVEN HEARTS* on a hand containing five to the Q9 and 7-8 HCP. Yes, of course I kept bidding diamonds, just to see if it would ever stop. Just solitaire, not money :rolleyes: . For some reason, while coding in a complete lack of understanding of giving up captaincy, the developers failed to allow GIB to bid to the 8 level. Feels like you're playing with Yosemite Sam's horse. "When I say 'Whoa' I mean 'WHOOOOOOOOOAAAA'."

Not sure why a robot would jump to 4 either. But it's mind-boggling that any partner, real or imaginary, would think of that hand as being any less than game forcing. It's like issuing a mild caution to the village while the lava is torrenting down the mountainside. I'm not a particularly good bridge player. But this system isn't helping me. It's like somebody's fed the GIB program a new and improved stupid pill.

Belatedly, sorry if anyone's still here and was hoping this had gone away. Sure prevents it from being fun to play. And absolutely useless as a tool to improve one's game. Do the folks who run this place not have the courtesy to be ashamed?

Disclaimer: I'm a badly lapsed player, intermediate at best. This is painful. I've discovered the duplicate and IMP robot play. If there were any thought of using that to refresh/polish my game, I've lost any hope. It would be utterly useless. Bidding is average at best and uses a system that is very unintuitive, and at least for me, feels completely inconsistent and full of gaps. Every few hands, I'm presented with no available bids to describe my hand. It would be an improvement, if it could be done, to revert to a system that uses a less random-feeling set of conventions, and defaults to the conventions typical club players will use routinely. The fact that you can hover a bid to get its explanation is one thing: needing to hover almost *every* bid to get an explanation is a sign of a system that is not very helpful. Sure feels random to me. Card play is vastly worse, especially on defence. The robots lead almost at random. Low cards are almost never logically from suits with honors, and you usually lose tricks by responding to the robot's "signal" by leading back the suit. Honor leads (J or Q) are almost never from JT or QJ, etc. There is no such thing as signaling, either giving count/attitude or reading and reacting to same. Heaven forbid you should ever want your robot partner to lead a particular suit: you have a 25% chance of ever getting that. Sort of makes you wonder what the point is. This is certainly no longer feeling like a platform that will encourage more people to play and help them to play better. It clearly adds nothing to "pleasure" of playing, just frustration and disappointment. And it certainly no longer feels like a platform I'd suggest new players to use to introduce the game.

Yes, in my experience, if it's a day with a "y" in the name. (Caveat: GiB probably plays better than I do. But he doesn't scream as loudly when I mess up.)

I am probably worse than GIB at bridge. That's why I don't post a bunch of complaints. I'm willing to bet a lot of the people you think are satisfied with it aren't. I *always* hover over every bid (playing solitaire) in hopes of getting an inkling of whatever wild-goosery the bid is meant to convey, but I often find the other hands, especially my robot partner's, between 3 and 8 points off whatever it's promising me in either direction. And I often find not a single bid that can describe my own hand within the same range. I usually close the window sad and frustrated after only a few hands. Just feedback here. Don't assume that because most of us don't take the time to complain, or don't feel we're good enough to be taken seriously, that we're satisfied with it.

With the caveat that I'm likely the least qualified person here to contribute ... I recommend GOOBER stop considering 3H very weak. You already have no room to move due to the pre-empt. What kind of dumb system forces partnership to game opposite a balancing double from a weak 3 opener when the doubler is a passed hand? Just dumb. Bid the 4-carders up the line, especially if your easiest bid is a major.