mythdoc

Straight to 3NT is a bid I made frequently enough in my days in real life bridge, in layouts like the one you shared. It’s not scientific, lol, but it often easily makes if the opening lead gives another trick. Hearts turns out to be your second best fit, albeit with no high cards! (Your hand only has 12 cards btw.) The times when I flew to 3NT worked out far more often than they didn’t, with the outcome that my partner (a better technical player than I) encouraged me to keep doing so and only pulled the bid when it was very obviously necessary to do so.

Here’s another one from yesterday. Why GIB interprets my club bid as 20+ points and 4+ cards instead of a rebiddable suit (when I passed) is crazy. https://tinyurl.com/sp3kfxj

Agree. The concepts of “running out of room“ to “make a sensible decision while you still can” are just not part of the program.

As you say, there is absolutely no reason for it to make that play.

Online is just different. That seems beyond obvious to me. In a real life game, the bidding of a complicated hand can take a minute. Online, it is what, fifteen seconds? In a “just declare” game, it is flashed upon the screen for what, two seconds? For a “slow processor” like myself, it is v disconcerting. Since I picked up the game again, now playing exclusively online instead of exclusively in duplicate games and tournaments, I experience a “flying blind” feeling, often. What that is, I recently concluded, is the missing intuitive aspect of playing the game IRL, that was a strength in my game.. Maybe if I eventually play something other than individual games I’ll feel that there are unfair aspects to allowing the bidding to be accessed. For now, it seems the fairest to me.

^^I agree with quite a lot of what you just expressed, thanks. When I couldn’t continue playing IRL tournaments due to insomnia I lost my (great) pard and stepped away from the game for a v long time. Finally retired and have more time, and BBO has been a godsend. I can enjoy the card play, play when I like (by myself or with my son), and be stress free. The spirit of curiosity spurred me to post and I enjoyed chewing it over in my mind for a time, but am ready to go back to just having fun now, lol.

^^Then we’ll have to leave it to the court of public opinion to decide for themselves whether I “accused anyone” or “complained”. I say my words (that you quote) plainly acquit me. You say they convict. Ultimately, it’s beside the point, but... In either case, in your thread starter you conflated my example with psyching, using a bidding sequence of your own invention, and then when I explained in detail how the ACTUAL bidding sequence had nothing to do with psyching, now you are saying it was maybe “misclicks.” Again, I am content to leave it to the court of public opinion to decide for themselves if it was misclicks, a possible case of cheating, or if something else is the most likely explanation for it.

To clear the record, first of all, I was not “complaining” in that other thread, went out of my way (I thought) to stress that. I welcome anybody to click over and see it. I was observing that on the deal you show above, one auction went 1♥-1NT-7♣, while another competitor OPENED 6♥. Those are very different auctions and call into question very different processes than the idea of psyching or faking out GIB’s robot defenders. Those are auctions where one has to be able to see the lay of the cards in order to fly directly to a top score. As for your poll, I answered “no.” Individual play with three robots is different from bridge insofar as the partner and opposition are givens, whatever their limitations or quirks. Tricking the bots seems fine but knowing that your partner just happens to have 6 clubs opposite your 3, and that they split 2-2, making this the only grand slam that works, is not a case of tricking the bots, it’s tricking the whole premise of the competition.

Allow me to speculate for a moment. I think this wouldn’t be too terribly hard to pull off. This particular event, the daylong individual robot tourney, would seem to require something on the order of 5-10 or so “worker” accounts harvesting deals in service of one or two “queens.” All these accounts could be at one physical location, using VPN to mask this, or there could be a group sharing harvested deals (via the internet) with each other. A screen shot of the full deal is all that is required, and this is available for a second or two at the end of every hand. (The worker accounts do not even have to have humans playing, they can be bots. They just need to take the screen shot.) The queen account, playing alongside but slightly behind the worker accounts, needs only to consult the crop of screenshots to find a match for the current hand. Some of the fantastical bidding, of which the most egregious example is shown above, is the most suspicious aspect. Over 8, 10, or even 20 hands (two day tournament) a score of 80% is not in itself suspicious, but when one looks at certain of the top scorers of the recent events, these scores combined with bidding oddities suggest the possibility of cheating. Who with 15HCP would not open their 5 card spade suit (or 1NT) to instead open 1♦ with only 3? You might if you knew in advance what the other hands look like. These are bids that, without cheating, should result in plenty of bottoms along with the occasional odd top score, but instead one sees 16 tops out of 20 hands played. Again, free is you get what you pay for. A similar tournament with a rating would, I hope and assume, be subject to a higher level of monitoring and review. Screening to avoid allowing previous computer partners to get similar hands won’t do much when new accounts may be easily set up and put into immediate use.

Good to hear. I’m supposing that in a rated online tournament like the NABC, the results are also subject to a stricter review process in case of obvious irregularities, than is warranted for a free daylong robot tournament. Thank you for the reply.

Thanks for the replies. I appreciate the free individual tournaments as a way to resharpen my skills. The score I achieve still works as an indication of progress or lack thereof, even if it might be smaller by a marginal degree due to cheaters. Seems odd to cheat when the event is free and nothing is at stake, but ....(shrug).

Another contestant opened the bidding with 6H with the South hand. That I can almost get my mind around, not the example above.

[hv=pc=n&s=sak92hat9532dcak9&w=sqj853h6dkj654ct4&n=st4hkqdqt9cj87532&e=s76hj874da8732cq6&d=e&v=b&b=10&a=p1hp1np7cppp]399|300[/hv] This result was recorded in yesterday’s free robot tournament (day one of two). I myself reached 4H and got a score in the 70’s% for making 12 tricks. I have been playing BBO for about a month after a long hiatus from bridge. I cannot conceive any way to understand this result other than as cheating, using some kind of multiple login approach. Please correct me if I am misunderstanding. Thank you.