wcneumann

You've got to be kidding. The Robots frequently bid worse than someone that learned the game earlier in the week. Their bids are frequently far from what's advertised in the explanations. They almost always pass takeout doubles and bid over penalty doubles, even when the auction and explanation makes the meaning of a double quite clear. While all of that is bad, what's worse is that there have been at best negligible improvements in the Robot bidding in the last several years. They defend and declare quite well. Their bidding is somewhat random and inconsistent with their explanations far too often. All easily fixed if the Robots would have to consider the explanations as part of their bidding algorithm.

And, the bidding hasn't gotten one iota better in the last 3+ years. The bidding system is OK. The explanations are just fine. The Robot bidding is beyond awful. Nothing ever gets better. Not even really stupid simple stuff like having the Robots come close to following the explanations. BBO should be embarrassed by the Robot bidding, but it's clear they really don't care.

I didn't say or claim they were trying to victimize me. What I said was that my experiences over several tens of thousands of deals is that they are not as random as they should be. When I play in their live games, I do not see the same behavior. What I did say is that it would be very easy to distribute non-random boards to targeted individuals or groups of individuals for any of a variety of reasons. In fact, doing so could be something that one might do to increase revenue. Distributing non-random deals or sets could increase revenue by allowing less capable players to do well when they miss a difficult to reach, but great contract that's going to fail because all three key cards are offside, or the trump suit breaks 5-0. As I said originally, I don't object do them doing things like this to strengthen their business. But, if they are doing these types of things, I do object to them not letting their paying customers know. If I get ambitious, I may investigate whether I can gather the data and do an analysis of sets and deals I've had to play over whatever period I can. Your suggestion that the data from such an analysis could be discounted is specious. Data is data. Either the deals follow a random distribution or they do not. My level of my play is high enough, and I play more than enough on BBO to have a pretty good sense about whether the deals I'm playing are random or not. I'm curious how wide spread the perception may be...

I'm quite willing to believe that they create deals that are random--in fact I'd be surprised if it were otherwise. What I'm questioning is whether EVERY user is randomly assigned ACBL Instant game sets and ACBL Daily Game hands. It would be a trivial bit of programming to select hands or 12-board sets that are something other than random. Once identified, one could easily assign such selections to a player or group of players based on any of a variety of metrics. If one did that, it would only affect a small number of players and one could, with a clear conscience state that the deals are "random." My experiences over my several tens of thousands of hands suggest that something like this may be occurring--at least for some of us.

Based on many thousands of hands, I'm 99.5% convinced that the BBO deals I'm receiving in the ACBL daily and instant games are not even close to being random. Bad and really bad suit splits are much more frequent than my lifetime of bridge would suggest, and key honors are offside much more often than randomness would dictate. Many of you have played random deals in tournaments and club games. What is your impression? I wouldn't mind if they weren't random if BBO would so state, but I suspect they are distributing "goulash" type hands to some or all participants.

I agree completely. The new HTML preview version is HORRIBLE when used on a PC with a monitor. The cards display much too large. But the ABSOLUTELY MOST RIDICULOUS issue is that there is NO WAY TO CHANGE THE SIZE. Fixed size display characters went out of style about 15 years ago. Please use 21st century programming techniques for the new version. Absolutely no reason why the size of chards and text shouldn't be adjustable by the user.

And, of course no one's notifying us on their home page, this forum, or their Twitter account...

We could live with "a little." Unfortunately, there are no limits to how much the Robots can and will deviate from their explanations, i.e., I've seen deviations of up to 4 HCP and two cards in suits--even in the same explanation. I believe the simplest solution is to have explanations override the simulations when the HCPs, Total Points, and suit lengths differ by more than some number, like 3 in total. It may lead to less optimal bidding, but the explanations won't mislead the humans quite so badly. BTW, I've also seen the Robot advertise 9 HCPs for 2NT bids over 1NT openings and only hold 8 HCPs. This has happened MANY TIMES. If the Robots are going to hold 8 or 9 HCP, then change the explanations if you believe in the simulations. Don't mislead the humans. Just my 2 cents...

I believe the advanced robots are used for the thrice-yearly NABC event, $1.25 ACBL Instant Games and the $.25 BBO Instant Games, and perhaps the Daily BBO games that score across the entire field. Almost anything that's free uses the Basic Robots. I believe the primary difference between the robot types is the analysis depth used in computing bids and plays. Much less "thought" goes into what the Basic Robot do. Hope this helps.

The Robot's bidding explanations quite often bear little resemblance to either its HCP, suit length, or total points. Quite often it will choose to violate all three in one bid. I see little value, for example in a Robot AI that chooses a bid, among alternatives that promises 6 spades when he holds 5 spades along with 6+ HCP when he holds only an Ace with no compensating distribution. Especially, when there are alternative bids are available that don't violate the explanations. It's just awful Robot AI programming. Until / unless BBO chooses to make an investment in their Robot AI programming and explanations, I guess we're all just stuck with the randomness of the code as it exists. Very sad. If I were programming the Robots I'd put a line of code in that doesn't let the Robot violate the explanations by more than two between suit length and HCP / total points. Unfortunately, BBO's programmers will let the Robots violate suit length and point count by 3 or more all the time! A little effort would go a long way towards making the Robots more friendly.

I ran into another absurdity today. The auction goes 1C, DBL, 2C, and my Robot North partner bids two spades. The explanation says he has 4+ Spades and 6 - 12 total points. He has Axx xxx xxx xxxx. How does three spades and a 4-count match the explanation or come close to a 2S bid? Only a mad programmer could dream this nonsense up.

It seems to me that the BBO Robot's bidding and explanation are frequently inconsistent in their HCP announcements; maybe 20% of the times where one cares. I've seen many hands where the robot has many fewer HCP's than what's announced in the explanation. I've seen fewer lies about total points, but there seem to be some. I believe this is happening often enough to warrant a review of the bidding algorithms against the explanations to uncover and correct as many of these problems as possible. On a related note, the robots are making some really strange bids... All nonvul, I just had an auction proceed; P by Robot Partner, 4D, 5C by me, 5D, DBL, where the Robot's explanation was that he had 7-11 HCP, but all he had was QJxxx xxxx x xxx. Where do these crazy calls come from? I had another one where only we were vul where it went 3C, Dbl by me, 4C and the robot bid a gentle 4S on AQJ109xxxx Ax x x. Yes, we made it--with two overtricks. Sigh... Does anyone care about these anomalies?