tx10s

No, as I stated earlier, I did not count two way finesses, only finesses that could only be played in one direction

Sadly, my computer programming skills are insufficient to develop an automated method, so the analysis was done by hand. To further clarify my previous explanation, I evaluated finesses irrespective of who the bidder was. (I did keep records by who was declarer, but since that could vary for the same hand, I felt the only reliable statistic was finesses not regarding declarer.) In other words, for example, if there was an AQ in either direction, I credited the finesse to the robot if the K favored the robot and credited the finesse to the player if is favored the player. It is pretty straight forward identifying finesses, so I feel my statistics are reasonable. BTW, the nine sets of 20 tournaments are spaces over the past 4 years. There seems to be a lot of negative push back from BBO. I have no ax to grind other that hoping the randomizer could become truly random. My concern also has nothing to do with my success rate in the game. I am currently averaging scoring master points over 70% of the time, which actually surprises me as being that high.

If you read the post, the sampling was done on hands that were already dealt. The fact that the finesse split ranged between 38.9% and 41% for sets of twenty tournaments averaging 281 finesses/ open endings with an overall average of 40.0% I felt was significant enough I do not understand question 3 Are you asking my confidence that it is exactly 40%? I make that assumption as writing a bias of 40.2% or 39.8% would be overdoing it, but I can not say that for sure.

BTW, I only looked at Robot hands. I do not play pairs that often, and identifying the best hand and evaluating finesses is even more time consuming for pairs games than the ridiculous amount of time I have spent already.

I looked at all cases of what would be considered standard finesses, like is the K in from or behind the AQ, is the A in front or behind a K, is the Q in from or behind an AKJ, etc. I did not count cases where a Q could be finessed either way, just those cases where the finesse or open ending could only be finesses from one direction.

I do not know why it is the way it is, just that it is. My guess is whoever wrote your randomizer dealing program put the bias in and did not tell anyone. That being said, the data is very conclusive that there is bias in your "random" dealing program.

My testing method was to look at the previous 20 tournaments I played, nine different times. The finesse split in those nine different sets was:38.9%, 41.4%, 39.2%. 41.0%, 40.6%, 40.1%, 40.4%, 39.8%, and 38.3%, overall average 40.0% for 2522 finesses.(I eliminated a partial set of 8 tournaments from these statistics, which if included would lower the overall average to39.7%.) That is an average of 281 finesses per set. The odds of not getting more than 40% of the finesses in 280 is about 4000 to 1. I leave it to you to calculate that happening 9out of 9 times if the dealing was totally random. Other observed statistics, players got 4-0, 5-0 and 6-0 spits 5.9% of the time whereas the robots got the same bad splits 3.2% of the time. Players got 3-2 splits 66% of the time (close to the normal 67.8% of the time, yet the robots got 3-2 splits 80% of the time (96 out of 120), a long way from normal, and about 1 chance in 500 of occurring in totally random deals. Posting the entire set of spreadsheet is rather difficult, but I would be willing to E-mail it to you if you really want to see it.

Does anyone here really believe that the hands in Robot Bridge are really random? I know for a fact that the finesses are skewed 40% for the players and 60% for the robots, based on analysis of over 2600 finesses/open endings, and that is just the tip of the badly skewed hands iceburg.

Yes, that is the hand I was referring to, but anytime the bidding has been 1NT-p-2S or 2NT-p-3S it has always had a similar result, so this is a more general question as to why the robot should bid showing a short suit after a 3NT bid by the player when the player already knows that the robot has at most 4 cards in the majors and still wants to bid 3NT. As a side note, I find it interesting that when the robot is 5-4 in the minors, it has always been 3-1 in the majors.

Can anyone explain why bidding 4 of a suit over a 3NT bid to show shortness is a good idea? This bid comes up every time a robot bids 2S over partner's 1NT opener to show 5-4 in the minors and 3S over a 2NT opener. Every time this bid has come up to me, I have never had a fit for the minor suits and the robot has always had a 3-1 distribution in the majors. I figure by bidding NT, the player is showing no fit for the minors and having the major suits covered. When the program insists on bidding its short suit, the player is then stuck trying to bid a bad fit at the 5 level. The only option is to bid your 3 card suit at the 5 level, but that has never yielded a good result. I know you can get around this by bidding 2NT after a 1NT-p-2S-p sequence, but there is not way to avoid this problem in a 2NT-p-3S-p sequence. Every time this has come up, the robot bid of 4 of a major has taken me out of a makeable 3NT contract. I once even tried to bid 4NT to play, but the robot then bid 5C, promising 6 but only holding 5 to the K nothing.

Sorry, I forgot to say thanks about where to post my question. I will move it now.

I tried that and the robot then bid 5C, promising 6 but only having 5 to the K nothing.

Can anyone explain why bidding 4 of a suit over a 3NT bid to show shortness is a good idea? This bid comes up every time a robot bids 2S over partner's 1NT opener to show 5-4 in the minors and 3S over a 2NT opener. Every time this bid has come up to me, I have never had a fit for the minor suits and the robot has always had a 3-1 distribution in the majors. I figure by bidding NT, the player is showing no fit for the minors and having the major suits covered. When the program insists on bidding its short suit, the player is then stuck trying to bid a bad fit at the 5 level. The only option is to bid your 3 card suit at the 5 level, but that has never yielded a good result. I know you can get around this by bidding 2NT after a 1NT-p-2S-p sequence, but there is not way to avoid this problem in a 2NT-p-3S-p sequence. Every thime this has come up, the robot bid of 4 of a major has taken me out of a makeable 3NT contract.

I just downloaded the Puffin browser on my new IPAD, and it ran BBO right away. It is available from the IPAD app store.

The ACBL robot bridge program is a mess. The robots lie about points and trump support, and many of the 2/1 conventions are not properly programmed. The robots continuously run away from cold 3NT contracts. They used to be able to play hands OK, but lately, the have been butchering cold contracts quite often. I have complained when I sign up for pairs, and I almost always get a reply from someone agreeing with me that the program is so bad. Most have said they quit playing robot bridge. I live in Malaysia, and during most of my day, the only ACBL games are robot. Please fix the program, as the concept is great, but the execution stinks.