uday Posted March 12, 2006 Report Share Posted March 12, 2006 When you enter a "fun money" table you are given 100$, and this is not remembered once you leave the table. The real money tables remember your balance, of course. It is possible that the FAST settings are occasionally too fast for GIB; I'll check/tweak. we've slowed down GIB since the early days and havent bumped up the max-time-to-think settings. It is also possible that gib is crashing or something, of course. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chicken Posted March 12, 2006 Report Share Posted March 12, 2006 i assume the average player wont play enough hands to even out the luck factor. i still wld appreciate (and use!) russian scoring with the human always beeing the declarer. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
uday Posted March 12, 2006 Report Share Posted March 12, 2006 The money bridge tables are now available on production. There is a limit on fun-money tables (3 for now ). No way to add $ yet, tho. How valid is this russian scoring stuff? A quick google search shows that you use a table to determine theoretical value of hand based on HCP, and imp table result against that theoretical value. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CarlRitner Posted March 12, 2006 Report Share Posted March 12, 2006 But I agree it's unlikely that someone will go through the pain of doing this. My post was more provocative than anything else, since 1) I don't play online and 2) I don't cheat, and 3) my program is not quite that far along. But it would definitely be cheating to use any sort of calculation tool or memory aid when playing online, and you really can't prevent that under any workable scenario. A scratch card to track cards played isn't very sophisticated, but it is practical. At a dollar a point (and I mean 1 point = 1 point) it's worth the pain to get whatever help you can, if you are so inclined to cheat. I don't know what the rules are, if any, for online poker; I'd certainly want to count cards, unless the shoe is infinite. Cheers,Carl Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hrothgar Posted March 12, 2006 Report Share Posted March 12, 2006 There has been some VERY serious work done regarding regarding the best way to cheat on various online poker sites. I can point to a couple interesting papers where someone was able to crack the seed for the pseudo-random number generator used to deal hands. This permitted folks to have perfect information regarding all of the hands at the table. Fun stuff. While this type of effort is certainly within the real of the posisble, it requires an awful lot of work. The scale of online poker justifies the investment. Poker is popular enough that you can make very good money if you crack the system. I severely doubt that BBO's money game would be significant enough to invite serious attempts at cracking the system. Its unclear whether a commercial program like Jack is necessarily strong enough to give a player a significant edge. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Deanrover Posted March 12, 2006 Report Share Posted March 12, 2006 A program like Jack could definitely be used to help in declarer play problems. Deep Finesse too. Not that rare that a player will find himself in a situation where he more or less knows everybodies cards, but the situation is highly complex and he doesnt know the best play. DF would get it in an instant. I do agree that it is unlikely to be a major problem in the foreseeable future. Bridge bots are currently at the perfect level for this kind of venture - good enough to make reasonable partners, not good enough to facilitate widespread cheating. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chicken Posted March 12, 2006 Report Share Posted March 12, 2006 How valid is this russian scoring stuff? A quick google search shows that you use a table to determine theoretical value of hand based on HCP, and imp table result against that theoretical value.that would be agood task for the bridgebrowser wouldn`t it? i wont mind playing against other scores than the original stuff if they are prooven by a sufficient number of deals.as far as i know the original list is based on the data of 2.500.000 boards. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CarlRitner Posted March 12, 2006 Report Share Posted March 12, 2006 A program like Jack could definitely be used to help in declarer play problems. Deep Finesse too. Not that rare that a player will find himself in a situation where he more or less knows everybodies cards, but the situation is highly complex and he doesnt know the best play. DF would get it in an instant. Counting is one of the more critical assets to have in bridge, of which I am just not as sharp as I used to be. A person who has a faultless way to keep count has a decided edge over the field, in my opinion. Now, when you evolve that little counting cheatsheet into something like Jack with Deep Finesse, you are going to take people's money unfairly; stealing is the word that comes to my mind. I certainly won't predict failure for this venture, but it doesn't motivate me in the least. My hope is that BBO makes enough money from this to put a decent effort into progressing the bidding database for GIB. It's a very promising but neglected product at this point. Cheers, Carlwww.carlritner.com <-- bridge books Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fred Posted March 12, 2006 Report Share Posted March 12, 2006 As I understand it, the analytical software available for both poker and backgammon is much more powerful than anything that is available for bridge. Considering that there are a lot of people playing both of these games for money on the Internet, I think the dire predictions expressed in this thread are way off the mark. Fred GitelmanBridge Base Inc.www.bridgebase.com Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pigpenz Posted March 12, 2006 Report Share Posted March 12, 2006 I am curious is there an advantage for the player seated to the right of the other human? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fred Posted March 12, 2006 Report Share Posted March 12, 2006 I am curious is there an advantage for the player seated to the right of the other human? Maybe and maybe it is better to sit to the left of the other human. Your position with respect to the other human is randomly determined before each hand that you play. Fred GitelmanBridge Base Inc.www.bridgebase.com Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Deanrover Posted March 12, 2006 Report Share Posted March 12, 2006 The analytical software available for poker is much much weaker than that for bridge. The opposite is true for backgammon. I believe that the bot problem in backgammon has had a significant effect in curtailing the market for online backgammon, particularly at the higher levels. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sigi_BC84 Posted March 12, 2006 Report Share Posted March 12, 2006 How valid is this russian scoring stuff? A quick google search shows that you use a table to determine theoretical value of hand based on HCP, and imp table result against that theoretical value. The Russian Scoring table is "valid" in the way that it represents the expected score for a given combined holding of HCPs. This has been determined by double dummy analysis and averaging of the par scores. So when using this table to adjust the scores, you are playing against the average. The averaging has been done for both vulnerable and nonvulnerable scores, so basically there are two separate tables. This still allows for lucky swings of course, since you can have a 20 HCP game or a 24 HCP slam or whatever. Therefore it doesn't eliminate luck but diminishes the effect of having "good cards" since better (higher) cards mean you need to score higher. The Russian Scoring table was made for f2f games, in an online world you could even calculate the par score for every hand and compare against the perfect score. This is as fair as you can get on a single table I would say. The question is if people want that (I understand that part of the thrill when playing rubber comes from the possibility of getting good hands). --Sigi Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sigi_BC84 Posted March 12, 2006 Report Share Posted March 12, 2006 A program like Jack could definitely be used to help in declarer play problems. Deep Finesse too. Not that rare that a player will find himself in a situation where he more or less knows everybodies cards, but the situation is highly complex and he doesnt know the best play. DF would get it in an instant. I do agree that it is unlikely to be a major problem in the foreseeable future. Bridge bots are currently at the perfect level for this kind of venture - good enough to make reasonable partners, not good enough to facilitate widespread cheating. DF (or GIBs DD analyzer) doesn't help you at all here. You need perfect knowledge of all four hands in order to to double dummy analysis. Now for computer assistance: Matt Ginsberg (the author of GIB) has claimed several years ago already that his program plays on "expert level" (he also conducted experiments and pitched the computer against experts, Rosenberg among others, to prove that). Since then he has improved the program considerably and there is a lot more computing power available now (steadily increasing). Considering this, I think it is quite feasible to obtain very valuable automatic or semi-automatic computer assistance by running GIB (or Jack) client side to help with the card play. I would probably bid myself (GIB sucks at bidding) and then let the computer play the hand for me (maybe after giving it hints on the meaning of the bids and so on, which is easily possible with GIB). You can check GIB's strength yourself by pre-dealing hands, setting the final contract and playing against it. --Sigi Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sigi_BC84 Posted March 12, 2006 Report Share Posted March 12, 2006 How valid is this russian scoring stuff? A quick google search shows that you use a table to determine theoretical value of hand based on HCP, and imp table result against that theoretical value.that would be agood task for the bridgebrowser wouldn`t it? i wont mind playing against other scores than the original stuff if they are prooven by a sufficient number of deals.as far as i know the original list is based on the data of 2.500.000 boards. After calculating the pars for 2.5 million boards you are probably really close to the perfect average for most HCP counts. Maybe I'll repeat the calculations myself one day using GIB to see how quickly the figures converge. Bridge Browser has 100 Mio hands but my prediction is that you wouldn't get different numbers when analyzing all these hands and calculating the means (I'd certainly be very interested in actual results, but I don't own the hand records). Zar Petkov has analyzed 10 Mio hands to validate his point count and is offering the records on his web site. DD analysis has already been done on those, so you'd only have to average the scores and compare to Russian Scoring. --Sigi Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
uday Posted March 13, 2006 Report Share Posted March 13, 2006 Fun money MB is now available on "production" if you have the beta and don't live in a US state where this sort of stuff is forbidden (apparently it isnt in florida, maryland, and a few other states) FG and i have decided to start with a 5-point-per-player-per-hand fee, minimum 2 cents, no fee for passouts. We will pass transaction charges onto the players for deposits/withdrawals. There won't be any such charges for people who pay/withdraw w/checks(on US banks). Paypal charges us in the neighbourhood of 3-5% for deposits http://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_...ay-fees-outside If this doesnt make any economic sense for us or for you we'll tweak it later. I like Hrothgar's word, "transparency", and Justin has convinced us that our first thought (10 points per player) was not reasonable. None of this is set in stone, but it seems like a reasonable place to start. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Deanrover Posted March 13, 2006 Report Share Posted March 13, 2006 Are you going to allow deposit by neteller? You would be making a very big mistake if you didn't. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nickf Posted March 13, 2006 Report Share Posted March 13, 2006 Are you going to allow deposit by neteller? You would be making a very big mistake if you didn't.Unsubstantiated sweeping statements like these are of no value to this discussion. Please explain why BBO Inc "would be making a very big mistake if it didn't" nickfsydney Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Deanrover Posted March 13, 2006 Report Share Posted March 13, 2006 Are you going to allow deposit by neteller? You would be making a very big mistake if you didn't.Unsubstantiated sweeping statements like these are of no value to this discussion. Please explain why BBO Inc "would be making a very big mistake if it didn't" nickfsydney Well I believe that a significant part of BBO's clientelle will also be online poker/casino/backgammon etc. players. By FAR the most popular conduit to transfer funds from one site to another is via neteller. AFAIK, NONE of these sites even accept paypal, and I suspect lots of only gamblers will have neteller accounts and not paypal (I online have a paypal account because I use Ebay). I also believe that neteller has lower fees than Paypal, although I am only 90% sure of this. Yes, people could get by without neteller, but BBO should want to make their service as easy as possible to access and use. Dean Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
uday Posted March 13, 2006 Report Share Posted March 13, 2006 Neglected to mention that the change to the MB (moneybridge) fees will take effect when installed on production (the current production setup still uses 10-points). I will try to get these changes into production sometime tonight. If I'm ambitious I'll get the real deposit-MB$-via-credit-card working today so we can start losing money to each other asap :) One reason we can accept credit cards is that we can accept credit cards (they are not legal for use with casinos. This is a primary reason for contortions like neteller, AFAIK. Another is that neteller says it indemnifies the vendor from fraud by the player.) We'll undoubtedly accept neteller at some point in the future, if MB turns out to be popular. You don't/won't need a paypal account to use a credit card on BBO. Paypal is simply the processor who validates the credit card for us. Similarly, you've never needed a paypal account to add BB$ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Deanrover Posted March 13, 2006 Report Share Posted March 13, 2006 I am able to deposit to poker sites using my debit card, but maybe that is due to be being from the UK/my type of card etc. The reason I use neteller is that enables me to transfer from one site to another without incurring exchange costs. If I had to withdraw my $ account to my debit card and then deposit from my £ account with the same card every time it would get highly expensive....neteller removes this significant cost for me. I'm not sure but I think neteller processes my money faster - my bank account takes a few days to process foreign currency transactions. I am also more secure having my money in neteller - I think it is much less likely someone will get hold of my neteller details than my debit card details. Neteller is also excellent at protecting against fraud - they will freeze your account if they notice a deposit from an unusual IP address. Further, since you say online casinos/poker rooms don't accept credit cards, and this will remain the case for a long time - lots of your users will have significant amounts of money online/in neteller, but not on their credit cards. For these people, the use of neteller would be sweet. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
uday Posted March 13, 2006 Report Share Posted March 13, 2006 The reason I use neteller is that enables me to transfer from one site to another without incurring exchange costs. They charge ~3% to the merchant for each incoming deposit. The poker sites (and the one backgammon site) shield the user from this fee (and presumably make it up with higher table fees ) Anyway: I will take a look at these guys once I know it is worth the time and cost to do so. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Deanrover Posted March 13, 2006 Report Share Posted March 13, 2006 So say I withdraw $100 from one site, and deposit to another - do both sites gets charged ~$3? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
uday Posted March 13, 2006 Report Share Posted March 13, 2006 Yes. I believe they charge on the way in and the way out. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CarlRitner Posted March 13, 2006 Report Share Posted March 13, 2006 Yes. I believe they charge on the way in and the way out. PayPal never charges you to transfer money out of your account, either to another person's PayPal account, or to your checking account. PayPal also does not charge fees whenever money is transferred into your PayPal account from your own checking or savings account. PayPal does charge a fee for someone else to put money into your PayPal account (i.e. a buyer sends the seller payment for an auction). Cheers,Carl Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.