allfail

Today in a best hand tournament, in the last board I played, I had something like 3-6-1-3 and 13 points or so I opened 4H. my RHO overcalled 4S, I doubled, my LHO changed to 5D and I doubled again. My partner led a small club. I had clubs K86 in my hand while on the table it is AQx. (x being something like T or 9.) When table played the x, I intended to play K but was unable to do so! The program just let me choose between my 6 and 8.... I was using the web client btw. So I just waited there until the time is up. I should say, I did wait for at least more than 10 seconds, so it is not something happened just right at the time the tournament ended.

Dunno if this fits the right section, but I think it is an interesting idea to have a different reward ratio and would make people want to play $5 a lot more since it would be a lot easier to win. In the current setting, the $1 and $5 best hand plays quite the same, except maybe the field is tougher in the $5 ones...

the rule being?

problem being?

I think I open my suit openings are similar to yours. I think invitational openings are not necessary under all vulnerabilities (at least for me) since I don't like to play edgy contract and spend a lot of time or end in a partial. For those better hands partner would also open if you didn't. However, I don't know about 1NT. My rule has always been open all 16+ if vulnerable. So if a hand does not fit in your previous description yet has more than 16 pts I would open 1NT. This includes 5M332, 5M4m22.. etc. Nonvul I would do the same first/2nd seat, but more depending on my mood. I think it is a good thing to discuss whether one should open 1NT in best hands. The downside is of course, being leaving out in a partial or being heavily penalized. The plus side is to reach game, with the bonus that GiB sometimes misdefends if you bid 1NT with 5 of a major. In my personal experience, I think ~1/2 or maybe more of the hands would reach game if you open 1NT 1st/2nd seat. The other half you would land in a partial, and the score is often small and can be played reasonably quick. It is very unlikely to go down a lot or being doubled unless opponents have game. In this case either way you are going to be negative. To sum up, I think having a 1nt hand 1st/2nd seat can score 200-300 in average if you open and is slightly too good to miss. Also, maybe the most decisive factor is that if you don't open and opps do, you are in a horrible situation since you cannot compete for the contract and they tend to play in a partial horribly slow.

My web BBO indicated that my recent total point tournaments (which are almost all best hand) averaged around 4200. I think I almost always get 18 or 19 boards played every tournament. The total number of boards range from 20 to 30 though. My lowest score is in the negatives and highest score is no more than 10000. Anybody want to share the results?

Hmm, that is quite interesting. Evidently I misunderstood something. So it is most commonly played that a new suit after XX promise nothing? I can understand the logic if this is the case. But I thought it is similar to a takeout being covered by a suit-- here there's no doubt that he can pass if he has nothing. I think in my previous posts there is one which I described more or less the same problem after a new suit instead of XX. Anyway, now that I know 1D promises nothing I won't be bidding 5D in this auction next time.

Non-vulnerable, sitting south, east opens (1C)-X-(XX)-1D; (2C)-2H-(3H)-p (3S)-5D-p-6D X-ap GiB N had the hand Qxx x Jxxx QJxxx. My hand is Axx AJTxxx KTxx --. 1. Can GiB somehow pass with this hand after the XX? I admit technically he had the bid but this bid presumably is made usually for much better hands. 2. I did overbid, but I like my chances of making 5D opposing AQxxx diamonds so I bid it. Now GiB, certainly enough, thought 5D meant 29-30 points and raised to 6. This problem has been discussed so many times. Why there is no fix? There is no such bridge logic saying he could raise to 6 with his hand. He is sub-minimum of his bid already; if I had 29-30 points I would bid 6 myself since I saw his free bid after XX. 3. In general, I feel recent versions of GiB has poorer slam bidding skills. It is somewhat more slam-aware but those jump to small slam very often results in a slam lacking two aces where he certainly has an RKCB bid available. Sometimes it is even worse; the contract is just so far off. In those cases I can see there might be a hand fitting my bidding which can make the slam makeable but for an average hand of the bid it is rather a long shot. It seemed to me in the earlier versions of GiB he didn't jump as recklessly and once he jumped the contract is usually of reasonable playability.

first seat both-non I opened 2C. The bidding goes 2C-2D;2NT-3NT;p(4D)! I doubled and collect 1100 easily. GiB held Jxx Qx KQxxx Axx. This is the second time for me seeing this happening. In my opinion, this must be the result of some huge sampling error of the sampling algorithm. It seems very likely that GiB just deals a fixed number of hands and uses those satisfying the bidding constraint to determine it's action. I can see with this holding of his the number of valid sample deals would be very small and the response is erroneous.

Yeah I understand your point. It sort of depends on your goals though. As far as I can conceive there are many situations where GiB would have a bid which does not match its descriptions but works nevertheless. Sometimes there are no plausible choices sometimes there are other perfect bids. For me, it doesn't matter whether gib conscientiously psyches or it just thinks some bid works best, as long as the simulation was performed correctly (in my current understanding it is a big if however). It should be a strength of AI since we humans can't do such things in a short time and if the simulation is correct it should lead to a better result.

What it meant is that GiB can psyche and it is fine, why do we have to fix this?

Another board GiB had: S AKQJx H ATx D x C Jxxx South dealer Bidding went 1D-1S;2H-2S;3NT-7H! My hand is Sx H KJxx D AKxxx C AKx What is GiB doing? Arigreen, did you change GiB's slam bidding strategies? I think recently I experienced a lot of this kind of reckless bidding compared to before...

Siting opposite a 2NT opener, GiB held S Qxxx H Q D AKxxxx C KJ The bidding went 2NT-3C;3H-4D;5D-p! My hand was S AK H AKxx D Qxxx C Axx Shouldn't GiB bid 6 at least since we have at least 35 HCP? Also, under this kind of circumstance I can't think of other bid of mine... (4NT is RKC, but I don't know his strength, 4D is stated to be 7+ HCP and who knows GiB won't pass over 4S or 5C...)

I think the natural way would be that 4H is a minimum hand with support (without an ace, no void, 5- HCP etc) and 3H is a forcing support.

I've never seen this before either. I had S KJ H AKQJxx D KJ C Axx The subsequent action was: 2C-2D;2H-3C;3NT-5H; And I passed since I don't understand what GiB was doing. If the bot saw me play he should be more aggressive since I am passing with opening values all the time! :D