msheald

It is a daylong, so no results till tomorrow. I suspect declarer played the queen of hearts on the first trick. If so, nothing wrong with that or with Gib's switch to a different suit on the second trick. It would just help me understand how Gib plays, both as a partner and as ops. Best regards. Mike

Hello! I think I'm missing something about robot play. Just curious. On this free day-long, when the 6 spades deal is pre-dealt, pre-bid, and the computer has the first lead, how can folks get 73% to my 27%? The robots take the first 3 tricks cold, so declarer is automatically down 2. I suppose declarer could play the queen of hearts on the first trick and that might cause anyone with under 5 master points to not lead the king of hearts on the second trick. However, should he lead the king and declarer plays another heart, a third heart lead probable for partner to possibly trump would be likely. Are other folks playing a different card distribution at 6 spades, perhaps to prevent forms of cheating? Or is there something in the lead algorithm that allows the robot to lead differently with different players even though everything is otherwise the same? Best regards. Mike https://tinyurl.com/2gmxdlxa

Thank you, all. My apologies. I was South. I did not catch that the hand viewer reversed the positions. Best regards. Mike

Hello! On a recent hand, I bid a support double, which was confirmed as such under the bid description. I presumed that this meant that the robot played support doubles? When robot rebid its suit, I was expecting 5 cards, and I was surprised to see 4 middling cards when the dummy laid down. Did I misinterpret its follow-up spade and NT bids? Of did my rebid of spades mean something different to the robot other than that I wanted to play in spades? Does the robot play support doubles? Best regards. Mike https://tinyurl.com/2f3kwcr5

Thank you for your note. Yes, I can see that as a take out double. Same concern though - a 5 clubs cue bid forces slam and preempts game, and I do not think north's hand is good enough to warrant that. Best regards. Mike

Hello! Thank you for your replies. I appreciate them. Sorry - the diagram reversed north and south, which I did not notice when I first posted it. This is a rather advanced discussion. As an intermediate player, I defer to my advanced colleagues if my reasoning is in error. I've put in bold my major points since the post is long. Basically, I feel that north's hand is too weak to bid 5 clubs cue bid over a penalty double since that forces slam. I preface my discussion with three points. First, this was a free game, so the robots were basic rather than advanced. Second, in my opinion, GIB (especially intermediate GIB) makes strange bids on occasion, and I, as the human player, have to take that into account when interpreting unexpected bids. And third, that all the human partner's I've had with play take out doubles through 3 spades and double for penalty over that. I considered my double in south carefully - gambling for penalty, but I like to gamble from time to time, even though robot deals tend to make those double unlikely to be good bids in my experience. Still, that adds spice to the game and helps me to learn. After north's initial pass, I figured it for 8 to 10 points, maybe up to 12 - enough to make a penalty double gamble worthwhile without the risk of trying to explore game that might not be there, or bidding the wrong game. I understood that north's 5 clubs bid was likely a cue bid. North cannot have a club suit since I have 4 and west likely has 8 of them. Additionally, a 5 club cue bid makes south bid at the 5 level and eliminates the possibility of a major suit game try, and so, likely represented a slam try. For me, considering the most likely card distributions, a game is more likely than a slam, so why would north prevent a game try when it had passed initially? I was left with a puzzling discrepancy. If north had 17+ points that would suggest a slam try (or a highly distributional hand), I would have expected something other than a pass at its first bid opportunity. After the 5 clubs cue bid, North should expect south to respond in spades as a natural bid since north only has to of them. With the lack of bidding space, cue bid responses by south become problematic, though doable with partnership agreement. North will not want to play in spades since south would have bid them if he had a good spade suit over the 4 clubs bid. As a result, 5 clubs likely means playing at the 6 level in hearts or diamonds. So, north would expect south to bid 5 spades (in the absence of cue bids), and north should expect to respond 6 diamonds (why go to 6 hearts since would require 7 diamonds by south if south does not have a heart fit? Additionally, south would still ask why north did not bid 4 hearts directly over 4 clubs if it had a good heart suit) and hope that south corrects to hearts if he does not have diamonds. As a result, since a 5 clubs bid would imply a slam try by north and, as south, if I had been expecting north to have a good enough hand in order to try for slam, I would not have expected north to pass over 4 clubs opening. A difficult bid for north, to be sure, since a double at that level would be for penalty. But that is the nature of bidding over preempts. That is why 5 clubs did not make any sense to me. For me, there were other ways to bid that would have been much less risky if north had the cards to support a slam try. In summary, I agree that north's cue bid of 5 clubs is a slam try, or rather, would result in a contract at the 6-level, which north should have anticipated when cue bidding clubs. However, in my opinion, if north had re-evaluated its hand after its initial pass and wanted to explore slam rather than game after a penalty double by south, I think a different cue bid at the 4 level would have been less risky and allowed more time to explore the best contract. (Any bid over a penalty double at the 4 level should be interpreted as a cue bid after an initial pass by that partner, in my opinion, as long as partnership agreement is that any double over 3 spades is for penalty.) So, I concluded that 5 clubs cue bid was too unusual for my taste and not something that I would have expected a human partner to do, so I passed and conceded 13 tricks and went onto the next hand. Thank you again for your consideration, comments, and teaching. I appreciate them. Best regards. Mike

No, GIB. I just passed and conceded 13 ricks when GIB did this. https://tinyurl.com/2oa63ust Mike

https://tinyurl.com/2qw92bhy I always thought a splinter by opener was a 4 diamond bid over partner's 1 level response, and a 3 diamond bid (1C-1S-3D) was natural showing a big hand and a good second suit in diamonds. See https://www.bridgebum.com/splinters.php. I guess robots play splinters differently that I do! Best regards. Mike

Thanks!

I'm just an intermediate player, so I defer to those with more experience, but I would think that the lead of singleton King of trumps may give up a trick. Declarers will typically conclude that they have to finesse for it, which would give defenders a trick since playing for the drop of the king as a singleton King of trump would be a very unlikely card distribution and declarer would have a low board most of the time playing for such a drop. Leading the king eliminates such a problem for declarer. Again, there may be another reason for defenders to lead a singleton King of Trumps, and I look forward to more experienced players chiming in. Best regards. Mike

Thank you, all, I appreciate the comments. Mike

Hello! This type of bidding seems to occur relatively frequently with me, so I do not understand GIB's logic and how to avoid it. GIB is a passed hand and in response to a my raise of my overcall (often non-vulnerable vs. vulnerable), GIB feels the need to jump to game. What might have been a reasonable sacrifice becomes a bottom board. If this were my human partner, I would explain that if he/she did not feel he/she could respond initially, he/she should not have responded after that. Why does GIB do this? Best regards. Mike https://tinyurl.com/2p4ny6ep

GIB does not double well. Op robot opened one diamond. 2 spade overcall by me and negative double by ops robot with my robot partner passed. Next thing I know, my partner robot doubled during each of the next two rounds - the first showing 4 HCP and the next 5 HCP, according to the bid description, showing 4 piddling hearts to the 10! I passed everything after my initial overcall. Robots don't seem to realize that a partner's pass is a very descriptive bid Somehow, if the hand was worth a pass over op robots negative double, I doubt that it was worth two doubles during the following two rounds. Mike

Hello! I agree. Another rude encounter. This is especially puzzling to me when it occurs in a free, 6-deal game when one has a different partner each hand. If such players cannot control themselves in such a game, I shudder to think how they act in other games! To be fair to the other player, I was likely more aggressive than I should have been given the deal and never having played together, but that does not excuse abuse. I put all such players on my ignore list and then reported them to BBO. It does not seem to help - a lot of abusive players out there. I used to just put them on my "ignore " list, but now I also report them to BBO in the hope that BBO might give them effective feedback so that such players might start to learn to control their comments and make BBO a pleasant experience for all of us. I like the idea of minimizing the chat window in such games since I would likely never play with the same partner in the future. Best regards. Mike

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