Money Bridge on BBO!

[CarlRitner]

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.

I'd be very curious to see how the GIB 2/1 bidding database was constructed. You can't just tweak the strength ranges and change a few bids from invitational to forcing, but there's areas of the bidding in GIB that make me think shortcuts like this were taken.

 

Now, it's possible that I have things backwards; perhaps 2/1 was initially developed and then it morphed into SA + Gadgets. In either case, it's been a very long time since a thorough walk through the database was conducted.

 

I believe GIB covers the holes in the biding database by using simulation/DDA. This is a workable approach if you are using a very natural bidding system. 2/1 (and SA+G) incorporates enough artificial calls that just aren't compatible with this technique, and the user inevitably draws inferences from GIBs non-systemic bidding that get you into trouble.

 

GIB's mission was never to be a consistent, compatible partner; Matt built this to beat the other programs, and ultimately Zia. It's also a work in progress that experienced an abrupt halt to debugging and is likely to have a few quirks that would be termed humorous, unless it's your money on the line.

 

Cheers,

Carl

[Kaapo]

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.

Gets even easier, if you also create a batch file to do the renaming (or copying) for you. In Notepad, open a new file and type in:

copy "bbover money.ini" bbover.ini
netbridgevu
copy "bbover normal.ini" bbover.ini

and save this as money.bat in your BBO folder. Now if you create a shortcut icon pointing to this batch file on your desktop, you can access Money BBO via it and normal BBO via your previous icons. But note that since the batch file restores bbover.ini to normal only after you close BBO, you cannot have two BBO instances (connected to different servers) running at the same time.

[Guest Jlall]

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.

Exactly. If you play better than your opponent, you will go plus against him over the long term. The gib may screw you, but the gib may also screw your opponent. All that matters is that you are better than your opponent by more than the rake. The gib factor will add some variance though.

[uday]

I have instructed the money gibs to "always make the book bid" -- I think this will reduce the number of actions that gib considers reasonable but that humans consider nutty.

 

FWIW, about the hand where gib jumped to 6D: it opined that interfering with 2D when the auction had started 1M-p-2C showed a very strong hand. Still, running the hand again with "book bidding" enabled made it pass the second time around.

[Guest Jlall]

Something weird happened. My RHO (gib) opened 2C. I had Ax --- xx KQT9xxxxx or something, white/red. I tried 6C, mainly to see what would happen. LHO bid 6H, and my gib partner bid 7N. RHO, the 2C opener, didn't X 7N. His pard did, then he wouldn't lead and the table closed because he was too slow.

[Gerben42]

I got the following auction:

 

GIB Me

1♣ 1♠

2♠ 4♠

5♥ 5♠

Pass

 

GIB had 14 balanced with AJTx in ♥. Probably a slam try but now 5 was in danger... Maybe with book bids this won't happen?

[Guest Jlall]

Are higher stakes than 1 cent going to be offered originally?

[Fluffy]

Will it matter if your human opponent is LHO or RHO?, maybe switching positions every few deals would be a bit mroe fair.

[Guest Jlall]

Will it matter if your human opponent is LHO or RHO?, maybe switching positions every few deals would be a bit mroe fair.

The seating is randomly assigned after each hand. So is the vulnerability.

[uday]

Are higher stakes than 1 cent going to be offered originally?

 

If there is any interest, sure

[Sigi_BC84]

Gets even easier, if you also create a batch file to do the renaming (or copying) for you. In Notepad, open a new file and type in:

copy "bbover money.ini" bbover.ini
netbridgevu
copy "bbover normal.ini" bbover.ini

Gets still easier:

 

Make a copy of your BBO directory, change the .ini files therein and drag a shortcut for the BBO client in the copied directory somwhere...

 

--Sigi

[Sigi_BC84]

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

Hi,

 

running the risk of sounding like a total croaker.

 

The idea of realising money bridge by putting computer partners in front of people is charming, but mark my words: you'll be soon enough either

• drowned by complaints from frustrated players or
  
• simply having not many customers in this area
  

GIB is a brilliant piece of work but the thought of partnering GIB to play for money scares me witless.

 

--Sigi

[fred]

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

Hi,

 

running the risk of sounding like a total croaker.

 

The idea of realising money bridge by putting computer partners in front of people is charming, but mark my words: you'll be soon enough either

• drowned by complaints from frustrated players or
  
• simply having not many customers in this area
  

GIB is a brilliant piece of work but the thought of partnering GIB to play for money scares me witless.

 

--Sigi

Have you ever played in a rubber bridge club?

 

I don't do a lot of this nowadays, but over the years I have played in maybe 7 different clubs in various cities around the world.

 

There are some truly great rubber bridge players out there who you likely never heard of, but most rubber bridge players do not play as well as GIB. For that matter, most Main Bridge Club regulars probably do not play as well as GIB either.

 

Besides that, most people will hopefully understand that having the same GIB partner as your opponent does not put a player at a disadvantage (in fact, it is extremely fair).

 

Besides that, some people enjoy the "action" of playing for money and this is more important to them than who is playing in their game.

 

Besides that, strong players rate to be able to supplement their incomes by playing in these games. These people won't care who is in their game as long as it is worth their while to spend time playing.

 

Besides that, if only 1% of the, say, 5000 people online, enjoy playing Money Bridge, that still represents 25 tables in play.

 

I agree with you that Money Bridge on BBO will not be for everyone, but I suspect that plenty of people will play this game.

 

I suppose we will be finding out before too long B)

 

Fred Gitelman

Bridge Base Inc.

www.bridgebase.com

[Gerben42]

I agree with Fred that this is a very fair way of playing money bridge. Also it safe against cheaters.

 

See my suggestions in the "suggestions for the software" thread about declarer: I think the human should be declarer in all the boards. This is also to increase the edge of the stronger human player.

 

* drowned by complaints from frustrated players

 

Partner makes a mistake - so what? You are sure that your partner is exactly the same strength as your opponent's partner!

 

* simply having not many customers in this area

 

If no one uses it, too bad. But if only 1% of the players use it, that's 25 tables, more than in most offline clubs.

 

As Justin mentioned before, the price per board should be considered carefully. Too low, and you don't make any money. Too high, and people will not win and stop playing.

[fred]

About the price per board:

 

Suppose you are playing for 1 cent a point (ie if your opponents go down 1 vulnerable for 100 points then you win $1).

 

Uday has suggested a price of 10 cents per player per board for such a game.

 

If you are able to play 10 hands per hour (and 6 minutes per board is pretty fast bridge) you will end up paying $1 per hour.

 

If you play for 5 hours you will pay $5 in fees.

 

Most real life rubber bridge clubs charge a "per session fee" in which a session is defined as, for example, the whole afternoon (which is roughly 5 hours). This fee is a typically a function of the stake that you are playing for.

 

The $5 that you would pay on BBO is less than the fee that most rubber bridge clubs would charge for an afternoon of play in a 1 cent game.

 

We have also done some comparisons with the fees charged on online poker and backgammon sites.

 

Bottom line is that I think 10 points per hand is more than reasonable.

 

However, I could easily be wrong about this. Of course we want to make the price fair and our policies in this area are still very much undefined. Feedback is certainly welcome.

 

Fred Gitelman

Bridge Base Inc.

www.bridgebase.com

[eyhung]

On fees:

 

I think comparing your fee structure to live bridge clubs and online poker/backgammon is misleading.

 

First: comparing to live bridge clubs. Live bridge clubs incur more scalable bridge costs than online bridge clubs. If BBO has 10 money bridge vs. 100 money bridge players, it probably doesn't make much of a difference to BBO's expenses, but a live bridge club has to provide more real estate, more cards, pay to replace cards 10x as frequently, have many more people there to adjudicate, etc. Also, live bridge clubs deal more slowly than online bridge clubs. You will note that online poker clubs charge significantly less than live poker, but they make more money due to higher volume and more scalable costs.

 

Second, comparing to poker/backgammon. Both poker and backgammon have a higher skill advantage. Given the choice between making money purely by skill of play at poker/backgammon or bridge, most people choose one of the former because it's more consistent. (I'm not talking about being paid to play, I'm talking about actually winning money from the cards.) It would be better to compare bridge table fees to poker tables where one expects to earn the same rate. I do not expect a penny/point player to earn nearly as much per hour as a player at the $1/$2 limit poker tables online. (You can get statistics from pokertracker databases to see how much money people tend to make per hour at poker tables, and see the equivalent rake and earn rate--rake ranges from 4.5% at nolimit tables to 3% at low limit tables to 1-2% at high limit tables; earn rate is around 2-3 big bets ($4-$6 here) per 100 hands.)

 

Also, the poker fees are dampened by the fact that you only pay the rake for pots you win. Most of winning poker involves avoiding a majority of hands, and thus avoiding the rake on most hands. When poker tables are played headsup (2 players only), players pay the rake much more frequently, and you will see that many cardrooms lower the rakes proportionally to make the game viable for its players.

 

That being said, it is in general better to lower rakes than to raise them. So I understand why you are being conservative in your estimate. But ultimately I think you want to promote volume -- get people to put money into BBO, and then play the money game. Poker (and to a lesser extent, bg) has a large user base of money players. There is much less of a user base for money bridge right now. Having a rake that's too high will impact building this user base. I think the best business strategy here is to build the market by offering low rakes and then, if necessary, use your monopoly on the money bridge scene to raise them. People will grumble but if they're hooked, they'll keep playing.

 

Right now you're supporting 2000-3000 play bridge players for free. Surely you can support another 100-200 money bridge players for a small cost to get the user base up and going.

 

Eugene

[pdmunro]

I think the human should be declarer in all the boards. This is also to increase the edge of the stronger human player.

I not sure if I want to be declarer whenever our side wins the contract: I seem to need the mental break I get from being dummy. I played 9 hands, then 8 hands, on money-BBO. Both times against an obviously talented opponent. I did OK, but it was certainly quicker than the usual BBO. At the end, I felt punch-drunk.

 

This is just a first impression. It can change.

[Chamaco]

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

.................

In the chess server, this issue is dealt in a similar way.

 

There, people do not play for money but .. for rating (yes, people are nuts LOL).

And they care a lot for it.

 

So, there are occasionally people who shall logoff in a clearly lost position, to avoid the completion of the game and the loss of rating points.

 

The procedure to handle this is the following:

 

1. the game is stored, recorded in the list of "adjourned" games.

 

2. at any times the 2 players are on, they can agree to resume the game.

 

3. at any times 2 players with a pending game are logged at the same time, they are both notified that there is online XXX player with an unfinished game

 

4. any given player can have AT MOST 10 unfinished games; when this number is exceeded, he cannot play other games on the server

 

5. if we are having an adjourned game for a long time against another player, and we have tried unsuccessfully to contact him to complete, it is possible to contact a service similar to ABUSE. This service is called ADJUDICATE, and can basically assess the result of a game when there are reasonable elements (e.g. the position is clearly lost for the disconnector AND/OR one player has tried hard to complete the game for MONTHS, but the other player has always avoided the solicitations)

 

 

 

The above are just ideas, not sure how much of this can be applied in a money game, and not sure how much ches and bridge can be different from these viewpoints.

 

But they have worked quite well.

 

For more info on these chess servers and how they handle such issues, lookout for the FICS server and ICC server (there is another server called Playchess):

 

FICS

http://www.freechess.org/

http://www.freechess.org/Help/HelpFiles/adjudication.html

 

ICC

http://www.chessclub.com/

http://www.chessclub.com/helpcenter/b2primer/introadj.html

[fred]

I think comparing your fee structure to live bridge clubs and online poker/backgammon is misleading.

 

We certainly are not trying to mislead anyone and these comparisons are close to all that we have to go on. Comparing online money bridge to live car washes or the online porn business, for example, would be worse.

 

I don't think a typical money bridge player would care about (or even think about) that online bridge clubs have lower scalable costs than live bridge clubs. People who play to make money only care about making money and that the rake is sufficiently small to make this possible for them. People who are there primarily for entertainment only care that they are receiving reasonable entertainment value for their money.

 

Both poker and backgammon have a higher skill advantage.

 

And you know this how?

 

Even if you could demonstrate that this was true, I don't buy your argument that since bridge has a lower skill advantage, it should also have a lower rake.

 

In any case, I agree that achieving a high-volume low-rake situation would be best for us from a business point of view. I also agree that increasing fees should be avoided (unless it proves to be necessary of course). It very much goes against the grain for us to take advantage of a hypothetical future monopoly position in order to rip off our customers.

 

Fred Gitelman

Bridge Base Inc.

www.bridgebase.com

[barmar]

Both poker and backgammon have a higher skill advantage.

 

And you know this how?

I don't know about backgammon, but I think I see where he's coming from regarding poker.

 

In bridge, if the opponent gets dealt a hand that's easy to bid to a cold game or slam, you're going to lose a significant amount of money on that hand. In poker, if you get dealt a worthless hand you just fold and the most you lose is the ante or blind. It seems like there may be more occasions in bridge where the card gods decide who's going to win a board than the players (this is why duplicate is considered a better test of skill).

 

Of course, in the long run these factors should even out -- you should get dealt the slam hands as often as opponents. But unless you play very frequently, it can take a while to see this.

[ng:)]

"It seems like there may be more occasions in bridge where the card gods decide who's going to win a board than the players (this is why duplicate is considered a better test of skill)"

 

This problem could be solve by Russian Scoring. It is not perfect, but better than Total Points. Works fine, social bridge players love it in Hungary.

 

Gabor

[eyhung]

We certainly are not trying to mislead anyone and these comparisons are close to all that we have to go on. Comparing online money bridge to live car washes or the online porn business, for example, would be worse.

 

I wasn't trying to imply that you were consciously, maliciously comparing house-favorable structures to bridge -- just that while it seems like a fair comparison at the surface, it's not. And I speak as a player who regularly plays online poker and sometime plays online backgammon -- one who has shown willingness to wager one's money on the Internet, a trait that is rarer than one might think. (For example, I've had great difficulty persuading many people to play online poker, even though poker has a high attraction factor.)

 

People who play to make money only care about making money and that the rake is sufficiently small to make this possible for them. People who are there primarily for entertainment only care that they are receiving reasonable entertainment value for their money.

 

Yes, for the second type of player, the rake is not as important, but without a large enough user base, they don't get as much entertainment. And my argument is that the rake as it currently stands does not provide the first group enough of an edge to play, which impacts the second group. The bridge vs. poker skill advantage is well documented (ask Bobby Baldwin) or the bridge vs. backgammon skill advantage (ask Kit Woolsey). The reasons are what barmar wrote in his post : in bridge, one frequently loses a lot of points through no fault of one's own.

 

BBO was founded with the model in that it's better to have a large user base (which results from free membership) with users who might drop extra money once they are dedicated to the server, than it is to have a small, dedicated user base (from pay membership). I think it's the right model given the status of bridge, and money bridge, in online gaming today.

 

Another thing you might want to try is to have no rake for an introductory period. The biggest differential in all of business is free vs. not-free. The mere fact that money bridge requires people to open up the wallet to put money into BBO will significantly impact the number of people who try it, let alone the rake. Why not nurture your user base and collect statistics on how well people do without rake before imposing a rake structure that might be better suited to other games? You can also advertise that this is temporary, so that customers won't feel betrayed? (It would also encourage people to try while the rake is non-existent -- people like deals and sales.)

 

Eugene

[Finch]

As the only way I'd be playing is when I lose my job for wasting company time on BBO forums, you can treat these comments with the respect they are due....

 

- I would expect the rake to relate to the stake. I haven't played much ftf rubber, but when I have the table fee has always gone up as the stakes go up. Although that is clearly unrelated to the cost structure, it seems to be good (psychological) sense.

 

- In the days when we had a gambling (betting) tax in the UK, you had a choice: you either paid a percentage of the stake, or a percentage (the same, I think) of your win. Most amateur gamblers paid on the win. Would a similar model work here? Players have a choice: pay 10% of the stake per 100 (10 cents for a $/100 game), or pay out 10% of their winnings? I'm only guessing, but I guess that would encourage more people to play 'for fun' and fewer people to play solely to make money. I don't know what you actually want....

[fred]

And my argument is that the rake as it currently stands does not provide the first group enough of an edge to play

 

And how would you know this?

 

Do you have any idea what expected per hand return a strong player partnering a GIB would have over a weak player partnering a GIB?

 

Do you have any idea how changing the GIB's speed from slow to medium to high might impact this (if at all)?

 

Do you have any idea how much money a typical person in country X who hopes to make a profit from money bridge needs to make in an hour to make it worth his while?

 

No doubt there are other factors as well that would have to be considered in order to make a statement like the one you made with any confidence.

 

Your opinion could easily be right, but I think you are guessing.

 

If that is the case, then say so. Don't present your opinions as if they were "facts".

 

The bridge vs. poker skill advantage is well documented (ask Bobby Baldwin) or the bridge vs. backgammon skill advantage (ask Kit Woolsey).  The reasons are what barmar wrote in his post : in bridge, one frequently loses a lot of points through no fault of one's own.

 

With all due respect to Mr. Baldwin and Mr. Woolsey, I don't think their opinions in these matters are worth much more than yours (with all due respect to you too!).

 

If "well-docmented" means "you can ask person X who is an expert at both games" I am sorry but I don't buy it.

 

To me in order to "well-document" something like this, you would have to look at a lot of data from both games and do some kind of comparitive statistical analysis.

 

I am not saying I think that you (or Baldwin or Woolsey) are wrong but I can admit that I really don't know. Unless you have some statistics to back up your opinions, I don't think you (or Baldwin or Woolsey) really know either.

 

Fred Gitelman

Bridge Base Inc.

www.bridgebase.com

[fred]

Can you please explain how Russian Scoring works?

 

Thanks,

 

Fred Gitelman

Bridge Base Inc.

www.bridgebase.com