leftfoot

I think there are two driving forces in the comparison: 1. There is always going to be a larger variation of scores in shorter tournaments vs. longer tournaments. 2. The master point scale of the BBO daylong highly rewards swinging. A 70% game will get you close to 7 BBO points while a 60% game might get you half of one BBO point. That is 14 times the amount of points. The same comparison in ACBL ... 70% will get you .9 ACBL points while 60% will probably get you .43. The 70% game only gets you roughly twice the amount vs. a 60% game. The incentive for swinging is much less. 3. You should also exclude the "Just Declare" tournaments in your analysis because there will be more flat boards since the opportunity for deviation in the bidding is eliminated.

Leo was very kind in his comments regarding Leftfoot's performance.. but since I AM Leftfoot let me say additionally: 1) One of the reasons I like robot games is that you can swing if your game isn't going well without injuring or benefitting the opponents ..... (or most importantly) have you partner yell at you. 2) If you want to see nonsensical bidding .. maybe you should have kibitzed Barry Crane in his prime playing against weaker opponents ... or kibitz a very strong Vanderbilt team down 60 IMPS with a quarter to go. 3) Bridge is about knowing the strengths and weaknesses of your partner and opponents and adapting accordingly. 4) I send at least two robot reports every week to help strengthen GIB (even if I got a good result). As GIB gets stronger .. I adapt accordingly. 5) GIB is already stronger than the average duplicate player. 6) I use some of what I learned from GIB in human (physical real time) tournaments ... and it has improved my result. I would suggest that people use GIB to rethink and test other approaches .. and see what works. That is what the spirit of the game is all about in (IMHO). :) David

Clue: It has nothing to do with Yahtzee.