allfail

to bb79, That is the same way as I calculated. 1/1000 is from the fact that if you take my open post into account...

That's the number I got by dealing 1,000,000 deals my self according to the rule stated above.

Well, I wanted to believe you but my stats just tell otherwise. I just looked at my most recent 5 hand records (which I am the 1st place for one of them, and won money back in 2 or 3.), independent of the stats stated above. In those 123 boards, only in 38% of them, 47 boards, did NS have a combined HCP of 24 or more. Again I stressed that if the hands are dealt as you said, this probability should be around 46.5%. In addition, in those five tournaments not even a single one is above this number! So combined with the above stats, one has to be 1/1000 to be this unlucky if the hands are dealt randomly. Even if we assume that is the case it still doesn't make sense. Why not? The reason is that I still have a net income (albeit small)! It's unimaginable if I am 1/1000 unlucky I can still get my money back since this is a -20% total sum game.

I believe the dealing rules are not completely random (by which I mean dealing randomly, and give the highest HCP hand to S) right now. I feel a change during perhaps, the end of January. Statistically speaking, in my recent 100 boards both my point count and the point count combined for NS are low compared to average (if dealt randomly), roughly at 1 standard deviation; the chance for partner to have the worst hand among all players is too high compared to average, it's 40% and again at around 1 std deviation. I believe the more previous tournaments are similar I just yet to look at the records. The worst stats I have (for now) is the chance for combined HCP>=24. In this 100 boards I only had 37% of my hands with 24 or more HCPs, whereas if dealt randomly it should be 46.5% and the standard deviation for 100 boards is ~5%. Of course it can just be that I am extremely unlucky (1 out of 40?) but it would be easy to check. I am not saying adjusting how to deal is not a good thing. For one thing, this may help to reduce people winning just by playing very fast. Nevertheless, in my opinion for this to be a fair game, if the hands are not dealt randomly then the precise rule must be given so that people can plan their strategy accordingly.

Yeah maybe... I intend to find out if that is the case. If you have different actions to the above boards which would work out better in the long term I would love to know about. On the other hand, I have no idea how to avoid slow-playing partials by opps. The best I can do is just pass and play as fast as possible. Penalty doubles and streched overcall doesn't quite work for me in the long term... By the way, I didn't play as much as some others do, but I think currently my life time average return of the $1 best hand reward is around 180% and I played some 250 times. Maybe I am just lucky before this week?

This week I have been quite unlucky at the robot rewards... lost almost $10 already in 2 or 3 days... The last one I did, however, has some interesting boards I'd like to share some perspective: Board 2 part opened 1S and we got to a typical 4S and made. So I started okay. At board 4 I had S Axxx H KQJxxx Dx C KJ In spite of partner's pass I decided to open due to the colors. (Maybe a bad move?) Part replied 1S I happily jumped 3S and we ended up in 4S. Good luck it seemed. However, part's hand turned out to be S Txxx H A D QJTxx C xxx and we went -2 after some long thinking from part. Now that's bad luck... afterwards the results being okay (grabbed 2 vul games) until board 11: I had S AKQx H KQxx D x C KJTx, opened 1C and LHO preempted 4D. Pass back to me, I doubled(T/O as explained.) What else can I do? Partner had S xxx H JTxx D xx C xxxx, passed promptly and they easily made 8 diamonds and 2 aces. 4H for us is makeable. Bad luck again. This behavior of GiB should be fixed... Now the next two board I made a vulnerable game and small slam and climbed to rank no. 2. Maybe my luck wasn't that bad after all. However, immediately after that I have 5 boards (not including passouts) which I can do nothing to prevent it being a partial. The play is so slow and I stuck at the score for maybe 7-8 minutes, my rank dropped to the borderline and then I got this hand: Board 20: S Ax H AKxxxx D x C AJxx. Vul, I opened 1H at 4th seat. Pn jumped 3H and RHO doubled. Generically speaking I think it's always a good idea to try for slam holding nonminimum hands (that is, hands that I would open) facing jump support in GiB tourneys since GiB's jump is quite heavy. I bid 4C, help suit slam try and was surprised to see him replied 4N RKCB. The most common reply here is 5H for some reason. Anyway, We went to 6H and PN's hand was SQx H Qxxxx D Ax C Qxxx. my LHO led CT and the slam had no play. Bad luck again. The very next board (after a passout) is quite an interesting one: I hold S Jxxx H A D K C AKQxxxx and RHO opened 1C. dunno what to do, I doubled (intended to show strength.) LHO bid 1N and passed to me. I happily doubled again for penalty but pn runned to 2D. His hand was S xxx H Jxx D QTxxxx C x, quite a plausible move from his perspective. However from my point of view I am desparate and tried 3N. Partner bid 5D... and you know the result. Bad luck? I don't know, but what I can say is that after such a long drought this kind of hand is really demoralizing. By the way, the explanation of my 3N bid is 4H 4S and 25-30 HCP. Somebody please fix this as evidently it is not correct in this particular bidding and even in the case it's possible to be correct, it's nearly impossible to happen. The last board I played, in this tournament, board #23, I held this hand: S Kxxx H Ax D AKQxxxx C-- I opened 1D, pn replied 1H, I jumped 2S, and pn jumped 6NT. What would you do? I was not sure at the time, but I don't have a long time to think and based on intuition and the difference of score (not to the borderline, but to the middle of profitable regime) I bid 7D. The reason behind the intuitin is that I have a solid suit and a void which pn had no idea about; therefore if he thought we can make 12 tricks then it is quite likely we can make 13. Chances for him to hold SA is not low, either. Pn's hand turned out to be S Qx HKQ9x D Jx C AKxxx. Despite not receiving a spade lead I still cannot find a way to make this contract. 6NT however is cold. Bad luck. What would you say? is this the typical bad luck you had during the tournament? Of course it's not the worst I had as the worst ones I would have trouble even making in to positive scores. I had those this week as well, but they are just too devastating to be discussed...

I understand that GiB uses Monte Carlo, but in the light of this bid this process is evidently flawed (or bugged). We should ask the question why human players would never make this bid. The answer is plainly simple: if partner is interested in playing in diamonds, he(she) would have bid it. In Monte Carlo language, the bid 2C-3C-5C should deny 4 diamonds with suitable honors, or the player should bid 4D instead of 5C. The constraint of the sampling must have some problems for GiB to find 5D more playable. As a side note, does anyone know how GiB samples the hand? If it just deal randomly and examine if the hands follows the constraint then it is very inefficient in these cases of a strong/distributional hand to find enough sample and this can also make its bid very unstable. On the other hand, I don't know a way to generate the distributions correctly with the constraint putting by hand.

I thought hoping for 2 Cs and a nice split would be an easier shot.

I'd like to suggest putting more contents online purchasable using bb$. There are several CD-roms I am interested in which can only be purchased by mail and physical medium. Programs by Woosley and Reese are examples of them. At the very least, can we purchase the physical medium also using bb$?

The bidding went like this: Me GiB 2C 2D 3C 3D* 5C ? 3D by GiB is double negative and my 5C I guess should be to play. I have: AKQ Qx AK AKQxxx. GiB bid 5D having this: Jxxx Txx Txxx xx This must be a bug. I can't find any reasonable way to explain.

Yeah, technically I agree it did not break rules bidding 2D with this hand, but I don't think bidding this is a good idea since: (i) partner doesn't promise to have 4 Ds (ii) partner's spade strength is likely wasted (iii) QJTxx in hearts are worthless And most importantly, (iv) in the case where we do have a nice fit in diamonds, partner with game interest will overbid since the average values of this bid 2D is at least a K higher than this hand. For peole to bid this 2D with lesser strength, the only benefit is in competition. But here since Opps didn't find a fit yet (looks like misfit or bad splits in spades) and we may just have 7 cards in diamonds I don't see a reason to bid. I would only consider bidding this with at least 5 cards in diamonds. On the other hand, I have various successes doing XX in robot tourneys. The usual theme is that GiB is very likely to double you just with strengh when one of them opened and the other one did a forcing response. When holding some freakish distributional hands your contract can easily make +1 or +2. One extreme example is that I once hold KQJxxx - - AKJxxxx and the bidding was (1H)-p-(3H) to me. I bid 6C, LHO doubled and I redoubled and get 6C XX+1.

This time, the bidding goes: N E S W GiB GiB Me GiB p 1H X 1S 2D 2S 5D p p X ? My hand is S KQ9 H - D KQxx C AKxxxx. I redoubled, and find my GiB partner's hand was: S x H QJTxx D Jxxx C xxx. It's still playable, but due to unfriendly splits my partner played it to -2. Does anyone have any idea how can GiB choose to bid 2D for this hand...?

Hi there, I believe lots of people share my feelings about this issue. As you can see I spent my time often on GIB robot best hands. While this is quite a good way to relax for me (and yes averagely I am winning), sometimes the bidding of GiB is really annoying and the strategy becomes doldging this kind of situation. For one thing obvious I know that GiB likes to treat our double as forcing so I have to really double check before I double a contract. Another problem around double is that GiB tends to let opponent play at 4/3 level major doubled with no particular strength even heart length. I checked in these situations GiB understands my bid as at least strength, not panalty. It seems to happen when the bidding goes like (2H)-X-(3H)-p;(p)-X-(p)-? or even (4H)-X-(p)-? I understand there's evaluation involved but I can't see how gib can determine that panalty in these situations win more. Anyway, the point of this post is something else since I didn't encounter those situations today but they worth mentioning anyway. Let's see what happens today: Board 5, NS vulnerable GiB opp me opp p 1C 1D X 2D 2H 3D 3H 5D p p p GiB's hand is x Qxxx 9xx KJxxx. What would you figure my hand look like? Let me tell you what GiB thought. He think 3D shows twice rebiddable D and 17-18p. And I believe you guessed right, my hand is Kxxx A AQxxx xxx, I think typical of this bid. I think what happens is that here's a glitch that GiB does not realize we are in a competitive auction situation. Otherwise this interpretation makes no bridge sense whatsoever. I can avoid this disaster by checking the meaning of my bid before hand, but for this bid... do you really expect your partner to interpret any other way? The next thing came up at Board 13: GiB Me 1D 2D 2H 3C 3D 5D 6D Now let me describe my understanding of the bidding. GiB says 2H promises 15p and force to 2N and 3D does not promise much. I take that 3D is a minimum bid and is nonforcing. Therefore my 5D is signing off, at least to play. Frankly speaking, what else can I do if I want to play 5D? Now the explanation on my bid surprises me a bit because it says 17p and up. Well, maybe it is not too bad since that's about the range for facing a minimum to play 5D. Now GiB raises it to 6. Maybe it is a plausible move? Let's see his hand: S KTxx H Kxxx D KQJxx C-- Well, this is not the hand I would bid 6D. He has a void in partner's suit and parter's S and H rates to be 3-1, 3-2, or 2-2. It is only good if parter have both the S and H aces, which is not likely (Otherwise partner may bid 2S instead of 3C.) Given parter 3 aces not in clubs the contract looks good but it's not made yet. But the bottomline is, if 5D means partner wants to play 5D, I don't see how you can bid 6D with this. Maybe if you are trailing with 40 imps deficit and 8 boards I guess... Oh, and my hand is S Jx H Ax D T9xx C AKxxx It may look not-so-terrible in the aftermath, but I would like to share my feeling at the moment: it is just downright upsetting to play a stupid contract bid by your partner when you can have an easy +50/+600 but instead gettingget -400/-100, as if it's a game swing done by partner. And even the worse part is, you don't know how to avoid it. In the first board I can just pass but I really hate not to have the chance to compete. In the second one I don't know. He can bid 3NT I would be happy; but if he chose to bid 3D he should let me play in 5D.