I have played a bunch of these tournaments over the past three months, so I will share some tips. I generally get between 20-25 hands a round (not including passouts). The most I ever got through was 29-30 (not including passouts, though that is rare. Your robot partner generally plays pretty well, and you should obviously try to get it to play the hand. It can make some very difficult contracts, but also occasionally makes mistakes, but overall it plays better than I do. It doesn't do stupid stuff like misclick, or forget what the contract is, which is a benefit. GIB will sometimes promise one more card in a suit that it actually has, so be careful of that. GIB sometimes acts as if its suit is better than it actually is, so be weary when it says strong and rebiddable. If you promise a minimum of 4 cards GIB will sometimes raise you with 3, leaving you in a seven card fit. GIB doesn't seem to differentiate the difference and importance between 7 and 8 card fits at times. East-West can be inconsistent on defense. Sometimes they defend very well, and sometimes they defend very poorly. East-West has some difficulty defending 3NT at times. Sometimes they will block their long suit, not take or lead the tricks they have in their long suit, or lead away from an ace or duck on the first round of their long suit when leading it. Use Fourth Suit Forcing. I like to use this to force to game. Often times in these situations you will want to be in No Trump, so doing this can try to get GIB to bid 2NT or 3NT. Sometimes it will rebid a minor so you will have to bid 3NT. This conventions also is helpful in showing secondary support. Remember if your partner opens 1H, you respond 1S, and partner rebids 2H it promises 6. If your partners opens 1 of a major, you bid 2 of a minor, and they rebid 2 of the same major, it only promises 5. Sometimes you can get two suits of the same color confused, so be careful about that. When I started playing these I opened No Trump, but I stopped opening No Tump. If I have 16-20 hcp, I generally open one of a minor, partner responds one of a major, and I jump to 2NT. Partner can use New Minor forcing to show 5, Rebid the suit to show 6 or more, and raise to 3NT if they only have four. Use New Minor Forcing after your partner opens at the one level and responds 1NT, if you have a 5 or 6 card major in the suit that you responded. This is a generally a good sequence. I generally don't bid grand slams. It takes too much time to explore them, and I don't want to go down with that many points, so I usually just settle at small slam. I usually just ignore control showing cue bids and put the contract where I want it. I sometimes ignore the Blackwood response and jump to slam if I am rushed for time. Sometimes when your partner bids Blackwood, you should pass if you think responding will get you too high, or if 4NT is an okay contract. It is okay to bid Jacoby 2NT with only 3 card support. I am pretty aggressive about making takeout doubles, and it has worked for me. Occasionally I will get a big negative score, but that does not happen too often. I will make takeout doubles with only two cards in a suit, even a major. If you are in a part score battle, sometimes it is best for your partner to play a contract even if it will go down to save time. Don't open one of a major if you won't jump to four or higher if partner raises to 2 of a major. If you have a 4 card major and open one of minor, don't open unless you will raise partner's response of one of a major to at least the 3 level. I never raise partner's major response to only 2, because I wouldn't have opened that hand. Sometimes GIB will take a contract out of 3NT and put you in 4/5 of a minor or 4 of a major on a seven card fit. Sometimes this is bad, but it also works out well, because it avoids 3NT without a stopper sometimes. If you have say AJ1098 in spades and partner has KQ in spades, it is usually better to be in 4 spades that than in 3NT when you have 4 or 5 losers right off the top. I am also aggressive at bidding Michaels and Unusual 2NT. It is important not to get carried away when partner responds. If you raise to game, or double an opponent's game, your partner might think you have 25-30 points, and will overbid. If there are a few minutes or less left, and the opponents bid a game, you might as well double. If you can set it you can get a bonus. If you can't set it don't finish the hand. You can try to trick GIB sometimes, such as making weak bids and weak jump overcalls with strong hands. Occasionally GIB will overbid you, and you can double them. GIB might also double you, and then you can redouble that. If there are a few minutes or less left, and you are declarer and the opponents double, you can redouble and try to make the contract. If you can't make it, don't finish. Sometimes you should turn autoplay singletons off when time is almost expiring if opponents are in game or a doubled contract etc, so you can get to the last trick without playing to see if they will make it or not. Make sure to turn autoplay singletons on when you play robot reward again. I don't have a specific requirement to open hands. It partially depends on if partner is a passed hand, whether we are vulnerable or not, etc. If I have a balanced hand, the minimum to open is generally 16-17 hcp. The more unbalanced the hand, the fewer high card points I will open with. If I have length in the majors, I am more likely to open than if I have length in the minors. I am generally pretty picky about opening hands. If the opponents make a takeout double of a contract you think you can make, you can redouble and sometimes it will be left in, and you can get a nice bonus. Two posters above talked about this. If you are a passed hand and your partner opens one of a suit, bidding two of a lower ranking suit might be passed. I like to bid 3NT in these situations unless my hand is really unbalanced. If partners opens 1 of a major, I like to bid 3NT with two card support. When declaring make sure to keep track of how much trump are out. Obviously you should always do this, but in timed tournaments you can't try to focus on too many things. Try to anticipate what the opponents will do, but be careful not to react too fast so you don't play the wrong card if the opponents play an unexpected card. Sometimes you will get really good hands in a tournament, and sometimes you will get really bad hands. Also, you can have a bad tournament, but get a good/ok score with a few good hands, and vice versa. If partner opens one of a major, you can jump to 6 to save time. Sometimes you will be off two cashing aces, but by jumping to slam, the defense might not take them. GIB will not raise you to seven, although it used to do that. GIB doesn't fully understand responding to your takeout double of a preempt or a weak two, and will leave it in and they will make the doubled contract when they should really takeout. They might do this with a hand with 5 or less hcp and 3 or 4 cards in the suit preempted. I don't know how to alleviate this. If you try to make a penalty double of a game after earlier making takeout double, GIB might interpret it as a takeout double, and you might get into a bad contract. Be careful when raising partners response to a takeout double. A free raise by your partner can be pretty light. Be careful overcalling 1NT when vulnerable. Another tip is if you are in No Trump and have Ax and your partner has xxx or xx in the same suit, hold up the first round, and sometimes the opponents will switch to a more favorable suit. Sometimes East-West has trouble identifying a strong suit in No Trump. One hard thing to decide is whether to raise a preempt or weak 2 to game, pass, or bid 3NT. If anyone has any tips on this, feel free to share. Slams really help, but the key to doing well is to make a bunch of games. You can go look at your hands and results after the tournaments, so that can help. The 1 dollar robot reward hands generally don't have as stiff of competition as the 5 dollar robot reward hands, so if you are new to the robot games, you might want to start with the 1 dollar games. The robot games are better when there are more people. More masterpoints and more money is available. You do not have to be a great player to be successful at the robot tournaments. I am an intermediate player with about 85 ACBL masterpoints, and I haven't played an in person ACBL club game/tournament since 2008. The key is to master the format of the game, and don't quit if you think you can have success. Back in November I would buy 10 dollars at a time and play tournaments, mostly robot tournaments until I ran out of money, or got to a dollar or less. I eventually got better and went from 10-11 dollars to a little over 750 dollars. I would not have envisioned myself doing this back in Mid-November. I made 7 different ten dollar deposits in November before I was able to get enough money to not have to buy anymore bridge base dollars. I haven't bought any more bridge base dollars since. One suggestion to get better is to just keep playing, be patient, and practice and try things to get better. That worked for me.
