Money Bridge on BBO!

[Guest Jlall]

Check out the new version, you can play for (fake) money. You play with a gib against a human and a gib with no kibbing allowed. This is so freaking awesome, I think this is a great idea and a great format. I definitely hope this is available for real money at some point.

 

Some points of concern...

 

Will BBO charge a rake or hourly rate? How much will it be?

What are the minimum and maximum stakes that will be available?

Will the GIB system be documented anywhere? Can it be edited to fit your own preferred style?

 

I am at work right now, but look forward to trying this out when I get home. I love how its basically 1 on 1. Really gets the competitive juices flowing. I can see it now.. "you won't believe what GIB did to me!!!"

[luke warm]

i'd love to.. alas i'm in a banned state (louisiana)... not sure why, but there you have it

[Guest Jlall]

Some more issues...

 

Are the GIBs exploitable in any way? If yes, does this matter because both players have equal chance to find the way to exploit them?

 

Multiple IDs. It would clearly be beneficial for good players to play anonymously, would this be possible? Forbidden but honor system? Forbidden and enforced? Many of the top online poker players change names routinely.

[uday]

The plan is to roll it into production in a few days as a limited beta (ie, you have to download the client yourself). If all goes smoothly, we'll push it out to everyone.

 

How will we charge? We dont know for sure what makes sense.

 

We're thinking of something like a flat fee (in points, maybe 10) per hand per player, player bearing cost of transfer in and transfer out of the system (about 2-3 percent each way, i think). Or maybe we bear transfer costs and raise the card fee?

 

The stakes are configurable by us, and i'm open to anything the players want. Initially i setup the test server (somewhat randomly) with stakes of

 

100 points = $1

100 points = 50 cents

100 points = 25 cents

100 points = 10 cents

 

and of course there is the "fun money" room where you get $100 when you sit down and it is forgotten when you stand up.

 

 

This is what we know about the Gib system for the moment. If people like this, I'm hoping we will track down Matt Ginsberg and find a way to play other systems. I dont know if it can be configured to play your systems. We'

 

http://online.bridgebase.com/doc/gib_system_notes.php

 

You can click on GIB's bids to see what it claims its own bids mean. We have 3 speed settings for GIB. ..i will probably slow down the SLOW setting a bit more at some point.

 

 

The GIBs are not exploitable except in the sense that if you know their peculiarities you might be able to take advantage of them.

 

The gibs run on our machines, unlike the main bridge club gibs, which run on yours.

Players are sent only their 13 cards, so even sniffing the wire wont help (currently 52 are sent when a player rejoins after disconnecting but that door will be shut before we enter production).

 

Only "money bridge admistrators" can spec these tables. Yellows cannot.

 

There is still some rawness in the money bridge area but it will smooth out quickly.

[Guest Jlall]

Thanks for your (very fast) reply uday. I'm sure you know this, but I'll point out that the players edge is usually not THAT great over another players edge. The fee/rake cuts into that edge, so if it is too high people won't play as their edge will be wiped out. Of course if it's too low it won't make much business sense for you guys. Hopefully you will find a good middle ground.

[CarlRitner]

Are the GIBs exploitable in any way? If yes, does this matter because both players have equal chance to find the way to exploit them?

Well, as Uday stated it, yes they are if you know where the database holes are ;)

 

As far as online security, I know nothing about that and can't comment.

 

I'm a little surprised that 2/1 was the system picked for use here on BBO; it's certainly not the most debugged selection (SA + Gadgets probably has the most complete bid tables and the most debugging efforts). Of course, that's all old news.

 

Getting to understand how GIB selects leads and signals is a challenge as well. I'll be watching this topic with interest, although I don't play online bridge at all.

 

Cheers,

 

Carl

www.carlritner.com

[Rain]

btw, GIB's system as far as we can make it out to be is here.

 

http://online.bridgebase.com/doc/gib_system_notes.php

[hrothgar]

Hi All

 

One quick comment: Back in the day, when I was playing arround with GIB, there were some noticable glitches in the bidding database. Most notably, GIB would often get itself into a cycle where it would

 

1. Bid a questionable contract

2. Get penalty doubled

3. Run to a worse contract

4. See item 2

 

I saw the silly thing loop from 4S to 6S doubled.

If this ever happens in a money game, expect some comments

[jikl]

My concern is this...

 

I was playing against Fred earlier and I had all the cards early on. I was up by a bit, then GIB and Fred bid 6♣. What is to stop people in my position suddenly losing link?

 

On a more bizarre note, those that have played, might know you get messages about time, I had GIB time out on me ;)

 

Sean

[CarlRitner]

I saw the silly thing loop from 4S to 6S doubled.

If this ever happens in a money game, expect some comments

One other item to consider here is disclosure and adherance to the convention card; GIB is known to take about a queen or king liberty with it's stated requirements for some bids. The range to open a weak two is probably not GCC legal. That's one that I happen to know about; there's likely others that I am not experienced enough to detect.

 

If you bid a suit for lead direction, you should know that GIB's opening leads can be frustrating in that regard, as well as its' propensity to not return the suit you lead. That particular quirk is part of the AI programming; Matt did not want to rely on any domain-specific knowledge.

 

None of this should be taken as criticism of GIB; I happen to think it has the best potential among the programs I've seen. But it definitely plays a rather unique style and it takes time to get into step with it.

 

Cheers,

Carl

[temp3600]

I've been playing a little on the 'money server' and have two suggestions so far.

 

One is very obvious : indicate the result of the previous hand.

 

More interesting : when GIB becomes declarer, it plays the hand. It might be a good idea to give the option, when setting up a table, to always have the players declare.

[pdmunro]

Rain, That link to the GIB system didn't work for me. Also I was unable to search using GIB as a term: I was given the message that "search keywords were below 4 characters".

[Rain]

Thanks for notice. Edited GIB system link.

[Guest Jlall]

OK, just played a session. Love everything except the amount of rake. 10 cents a hand in a 1 cent game is A LOT. It is rare that one player who is over 100 points every 10 hands worse than another will volunteer to play him heads up. Thus, the rake is the only one that will win. I have talked to some people who regularly play rubber bridge, and most seem to think that 10 cents a hand in a 1 cent game is nuts. I'm not sure what a comprable rate is, what do NY rubber bridge clubs charge?

[temp3600]

My concern is this...

 

I was playing against Fred earlier and I had all the cards early on. I was up by a bit, then GIB and Fred bid 6♣. What is to stop people in my position suddenly losing link?

An easy way to remedy to this problem would be this.

 

When a host sets up a table, s/he specifies either a number of hands to be dealt, or a certain duration. This value determines the lenght of the game between the two players.

 

If a player is disconnected and does not reconnect within a certain amount of time, no money is exchanged, but the incident is of course recorded, and repeated violations, ..., you get the idea.

 

Because I felt this very static way of setting up a table wasn't very friendly, I was wondering if a minimum number of hands (or minimum duration) was enough, i.e. players would have to play 20 hands, or 2 hours, and then could leave after any hand. But even the slightest flexibility gives a player the possibility of simply leaving just after scoring a grand slam. So, for this mechanism, I don't see any good alternative to static, pre-determined game lengths.

[uday]

Open to suggestions re. rake. There are 4 numbers to consider

 

- cost of deposit (ranges from 3-6% with credit cards/neteller, nominal with checks)

- cost of withdrawal (about 3%, i think , nominal with check)

 

- rake from winner (percentage of score? flat fee?)

- rake from loser (nothing? same as winner?)

 

 

It has been a long time since I played rubber for real but I vaguely remember that the fee was sort of similar to the card fee in the duplicate room (this in NYC)

[uday]

The way we expect to handle cases of missing/disconnected players:

 

if a player is unresponsive or missing, the hand is settled ( by 4 robots finished out the hand to establish a score). A hand is considered a candidate for settlement once it is dealt. ie, once you say 'OK' to the next hand, you are on the hook for it, even if you pick up a bust & hear RHO open 2C. This settlement code is not operational yet. At this moment, the hand is closed, the table is closed, and remaining player(s) are notified that the hand has been queued for settlement. I can't think of a better way to establish a result than this when a hand is incomplete.

 

I dont think we should allow series (unless we're willing to set rules for what happens when a series is abandoned). But if we want them, we'll set up some rooms that force series.

 

Initially i think the stake should be fixed, not variable (ie, not set - just selected - by player).

[mrdct]

A little tip to make it a bit easier to switch between money-BBO and traditional-BBO:

 

In your c:/bridge base online directory, have two "bbover.ini" files called bbover money.ini and bbover normal.ini

 

You then just delete the word "money" or "normal" from the version you want to play and then when you want to switch, rename the files. Still a bit of mucking around, but easier than editing the file in notepad everytime.

[cherdano]

A little tip to make it a bit easier to switch between money-BBO and traditional-BBO:

 

In your c:/bridge base online directory, have two "bbover.ini" files called bbover money.ini and bbover normal.ini

 

You then just delete the word "money" or "normal" from the version you want to play and then when you want to switch, rename the files. Still a bit of mucking around, but easier than editing the file in notepad everytime.

If that's really easier, maybe you try to get used to a better editor ;)

 

Arend

[eyhung]

Here are my preliminary comments :

 

When starting a new money bridge table, the help button doesn't bring up any text. I think it is important to quantify just how slow clock speed is for slow, medium, fast on the main window, as that tells people how much time they can expect to take before losing their money. Also, I think the robot speed should be quantified up front as well.

 

GIB speed and clock speed should be viewable from the lobby and at the table.

 

it would be nice to have a third GIB available at the fun money tables so that people could "practice".

 

Give the player control over when the trick is retired. Right now GIB can whip out a card to the next trick before I've seen all 3 cards played by the other GIBs (usually when GIB is declaring).

 

Show the results for the previous board(s) and show the accounting of the money. i.e. Last hand, W made 3NT =, West wins $3.90, East loses $4.10. It would also be nice to see how many boards you've played.

 

The rake feels too high to me. I wouldn't play with this rake scheme. I'll defer to those with more money bridge experience as to what a better rake might be.

 

It would be nice to have a rubber/chicago bridge modes available so that the vulnerabilities are a little more under control and the art of bidding with a partscore is rewarded.

 

It would also be nice to have a way to call up a menu of how GIB would interpret your bid. i.e. after 1C (P) 1S (P) / 1NT (P) the user could see what the bids for the next level would mean. Or provide a "query" button in place of where the alert button used to be, which allows a player to ask GIB how it would interpret a hypothetical bid.

 

 

Eugene

[mink]

I tested the money thing this moring. When I logged in I was alone, but short time after mrdct joined me and we played a few boards, with default settings. This was the second one (mrdct west and I south):

[hv=d=n&v=e&n=s4hqt743dktcat875&w=st963hadaq8643cj9&e=sk872hk9652d975c3&s=saqj5hj8dj2ckq642]399|300|Scoring: IMP[/hv]

 

West North East South

 

- 1♥ Pass 2♣

2♦ 3♣ 3♠ Dbl

Pass Pass 6♦ Dbl

Pass Pass Pass

 

S4 S2 SJ S3

H8 HA H3 H2

C9 CT C3 C2

H7 HK HJ ST

D5 D2 DQ DK

HQ H5 DJ DA

CJ C8 D9 C4

D7 S5 D3 DT

HT H6 C6 D4

S6 C7 S7 SQ

CK D6 C5 S8

S9 H4 SK SA

CQ D8 CA H9

 

Result: -5 and 1400 for NS

 

Maybe no surprise that mrdct cursed his GIB partner with open chat when he saw the dummy.

 

Maybe instead of doing this total points, there could be a second table with GIB players in all seats and IMPs computed by comparing the results of the 2 tables. However, this would not prevent an incident like this one.

 

Karl

[david_c]

The way we expect to handle cases of missing/disconnected players:

 

if a player is unresponsive or missing, the hand is settled ( by 4 robots finished out the hand to establish a score).

That doesn't seem quite fair on the remaining player, as they might easily have done better than the GIB which takes their place. How about instead giving them the option to either

 

(i) scratch the hand; or

 

(ii) play it out against two GIBs.

[ng:)]

Nice new feature, thanks.

 

Might be better to play Russian Scoring instead of Total Points (or Host have an option).

 

There are 3 advantages if players are always declarer.

 

1. Less complaints.

2. More play as declarer.

3. Your skill as declarer would be the deciding factor.

 

Gabor

[DenisO]

Maybe no surprise that mrdct cursed his GIB partner with open chat when he saw the dummy.

 

Karl

I notice that this post has ben edited and the reference to gambling removed.

 

I think it was a fair comment as I don't think the current BBO GIB is a good enough bidder to play for money with.

 

I tried the same haned with my retail GIB and the bidding went the same way except that my GIB passed the 3SX (ie did not bid) 6D!

 

My GIB was playing standard + gadgets which is the bidding system that Matt Ginsberg (and all the GIB beta testers) spent a huge amount of time working on and is GIB's strongest system.

 

I believe if GIB is going to be used to play for real money, that some work needs to be done to allow the BBO GIB to use Matt's preferred system.

[fred]

Maybe no surprise that mrdct cursed his GIB partner with open chat when he saw the dummy.

 

Karl

I notice that this post has ben edited and the reference to gambling removed.

 

I think it was a fair comment as I don't think the current BBO GIB is a good enough bidder to play for money with.

 

I tried the same haned with my retail GIB and the bidding went the same way except that my GIB passed the 3SX (ie did not bid) 6D!

 

My GIB was playing standard + gadgets which is the bidding system that Matt Ginsberg (and all the GIB beta testers) spent a huge amount of time working on and is GIB's strongest system.

 

I believe if GIB is going to be used to play for real money, that some work needs to be done to allow the BBO GIB to use Matt's preferred system.

It would not be difficult (I think!) to change the bidding system that GIB uses on BBO. I believe you that GIB's implementation of "standard with gadgets" is better than the system we have GIB playing now, but I will talk to Matt about this in a few days to make sure (he is currently on vacation).

 

It should also be noted that the speed settings for GIB have a clear effect on the quality of GIB's play. It is far from clear that the settings we are using for "slow", "medium", and "fast" are optimal. We will likely play around with these settings as we receive more feedback.

 

Regardless of the system GIB plays and regardless of the speed setting, GIB will still make some really bad bids or plays from time to time (just like people). Hopefully most of the people who play money bridge on BBO will understand that this factor, like holding good cards when playing for money, is something that will even out over time.

 

Fred Gitelman

Bridge Base Inc.

www.bridgebase.com