hoodwinked

Justin this wasn't about my game or my ability but what the gib does and I resent you making it about my game. I was attempting to put down what i've been seeing in black and white - and you apparently decided that I am offended - which is not the case - however I take deep offence to your words.

What about the fact that you can't have a hope of competing when gib gets every single good hand and you don't get a single one - where's the fairness there? You can't say it even's out. Secondly, as far as I'm concerned GIB cheats - I've seen many a hand where Gib made the magic bid at the 5 level - making an obscure bid which no sane person would ever make and you guessed it - his partner has the magic hand for him. No doubles have been made - usually fast bidding. No hypothesis meets the theory for it anyone could have had the cards and he could have gone 800 or more for it but he magically never does. Theft????? As I said before I'm angry and I won't put this down to other people fighting the gibs - I've done well and been able to milk my gibs for all they are worth but ultimately I always lose to them and that's not right.

I'm very angry with BBO right now. I've spent well over $100 playing BBO race tournaments and money tournaments, have a good understanding of the GIB bidding system and it's idiosyncracies but I have zero tolerance for what's happening in the game itself. a) If you support Gib in the third round of bidding or so it automatically decides to either pass when it should go on to game or possibly even slam OR even worse decides to bid 7NT without checking if it's even possible!!! For example, I made a jump support in a suit and Gib just automatically jumps to 7nt with a decent but not great hand! (he had 4 losers) :) GIB has a terribe habit of redoubling with a weak hand after opps double him at the 5 level. Especially when he has no hope of making it. This is ridiculous and has been the cause of many a lost game - today in particular, I lost 1000 poiints back in back to back hands - Gib doesn't understand a sacrafice bid UNLESS he makes it. It's just fine for Gib to make the bid. c) Third, gib sometimes declares brilliantly but at times declares like an idiout throwing away all of his winners when he could easily make a contract if he were to keep them. I have many many hands in my database but I don't wish to revisit them. I'm not up to supporting BBO's endeavors on my disability cheque with this shoddy effort. I wish it was better because the idea is excellent - the execution just sucks big time.

Today when playing in a money bridge tournament came up with an interesting deal - GIB had a hand something like this xxx xx xxx xxxxx about 6 hcp and I had opened 1 club. Instead of the expected 1NT or 3c inverted response he responded 1 diamond!!! He then bid 2 clubs over a 1 heart rebid which left me in a bit of a quandary with my strongish nt hand with both majors. I had no clue whether this was a strong hand with both minors or a weak one. I made the error of bidding 2nt and Gib now rebids 3 spades and we play in a very unmakeable 3nt when 2 or 3 clubs was the max for the hand. Another hand, GIB decided to open 1c and I passed holding 5 clubs. The e/w pair eventually played in 2 hearts when 5 clubs made in N/S. You guessed it - GIB opened a short club!!! I've NEVER seen that one before. Did Gib just decide to do something outside partnership agreement? I find that hard to believe.

yes even that would be better than the way things are now - I'd be one to actively vote for that

someone was in the tournament lobby pretty upset today over the fact that the gibs had all the good hands. Basically mentioned he wanted to sue GIB :) I have to agree with him that the format of these tourneys is REALLY unfair at this point. They are getting larger every day to the point if you don't get lucky and come up with a few early slams you have no chance of placing much less winning. The gib games do not reward sound play or biddinig but is pretty much based purely on luck and to a lesser extent knowledge of how the gibs act. There is definately an element of strategy but you can't have any strategy if you don't get equal cards.

Another thing of note with the gibs.........why on earth do they INSIST on transferring with 4 card suits with weakish hands when playing 1nt going down might be better or even when they have 2 4 card suits? Can this not be changed?

I've had some thoughts about the utter randomness of the total points format in money bridge tournaments. In addition to the sometimes very strange bidding of the gibs (i.e. a gib bidding slam for no reason in this auction - 1c 2c 3c when he holds say 8 points, or the automatic slam bid of a gib when he holds a longish minor hand not necessarily strong when you open 2c and jump to 3nt. Even such things as gibs pulling doubles in strange sitations, making it very scary to hit the double card. Another strange thing with gibs, somethings they know what is a cue bid other times, they do not even tho they may have started the sequence themselves. So much for robotics. It has a long ways to go. At any rate, since everyone has to deal with these strange things, it puts a person at an even further disadvantage when dealing in a TP format. I understand that the TP format with random hands was probaby put in place to prevent cheating but wouldn't the same thing be accomplished if a set number of boards were to be assigned and the tournament not completed until all players completed all boards. Perhaps, the boards could be randomized for each player so that each player is not necessarily playing the same board at the same time in true duplicate style.