sflicht

I'm having trouble too; I guess it is down.

Another GiB bidding complaint: I opened 1H, and holding Axx, 98x, xx, Jxxxx, GiB bid a forcing 1NT! Some wires must have been crossed...

Hi, 1) Can the GiB algorithm be open-sourced? I don't know whether BBO has purchased the exclusive right to use and distribute the software from Ginsburg (or whoever). If so, it seems to me that it doesn't lose any value as a money-making tool for BBO if the algorithms were made public. After all, BBO will always have control over what robots are allowed to run on their servers. 2) A few thoughts on GiB's bidding system: 2a) Don't jump in response to a takeout X without extra length in the jump suit. Instead, make a forcing bid such as a cuebid. This frees up the takeout X in many scenarios to be slightly more flexible with regard to major suit length than the FD specification of the bid requires. 2b) Right now GiB has a somewhat unfortunate habit of making natural jumps to the 5 level in a major suit fit as a generic slam try. This is unscientific in the extreme, especially since it's rather unclear what GiB "wants" us to go to slam with. Even if this bid remains (instead of having GiB bid keycard more often -- I assume this bid comes up most often when GiB thinks 4NT is quantitative) it would be very helpful to have a precisely defined meaning; e.g. "Go to slam with 2 trump honors." 2c) Capp doesn't make a lot of sense versus strong 1NT. The penalty X almost never comes up. 3) Is there an intrinsic obstacle to making GiB's system customizable? I've been experimenting with python scripts which can parse a standardized file format for bidding conventions and bid accordingly. (I used XML, which is easy to manipulate in python, to define specific restrictions which must be satisfied in order for a giving bidding sequence / continuation to be permitted.) I suspect GiB must have some sort of system for doing the same installed; otherwise changes to GiB's bidding such as the recent innovation of "no transfers to 4 card majors" (!) would require changing a hard-coded bidding algorithm, which seems painful. So if GiB *IS* customizable, why not open it up to users? It would be very helpful for practicing more interesting bidding methods. -sflicht