fred Posted June 7, 2006 Report Share Posted June 7, 2006 We are making an effort to improve GIB's performance, especially in the bidding. The GIB program comes with a database that includes information that describes the meanings of many bidding sequences. This is a very big and complex file and, not surprisingly, it contains some errors. Some of these errors manifest themselves in unexplainably strange bids by GIB. The easiest way for us to track down and fix these errors is by looking at example hands in which GIB made a crazy bid. For example: - GIB has been known to respond with a Jacoby transfer to partner's 1NT opening and then Pass the completion of the transfer with a very strong hand. - GIB sometimes interprets the cuebid of the opponents suit as a natural bid. - GIB sometimes runs from a redoubled contract to the same suit at the next level. If you see things like this happen it would be very helpful if you could send me a copy of your BBO log file from the session in question as an e-mail attachment. Please include in your e-mail a note of the board number (or numbers) in which the strange bid (or bids) occurred. If you can't figure out how to do this, it is OK to type up the hand and include that in the e-mail. I will need to know the dealer, vulnerabilty, the bidding up to the point of the problem, and the 13 cards that the GIB that made the strange bid was dealt. I don't need to know the contents of the other 3 hands (but feel free to send this information if you are so inclined). My e-mail address is: fred@bridgebase.com Please note that we are looking for examples of bids made by GIB that make absolutely no sense. We are not concerned with reasonable bids that GIB made that worked out badly on the actual deal. Examples from MB and MBTs are especially useful, but examples from play against GIB in the Main Bridge Club could be helpful as well. I am going to be away from my office between this Friday and roughly June 25 so and I may not be able to respond to e-mail during this time. Thanks in advance for anyone who is willing to send us examples of strange bids by GIB. Hopefully with your help will be able to make some positive improvements to GIB and this should lead to a better BBO experience for a lot of our members. Fred GitelmanBridge Base Inc.www.bridgebase.com Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nikos59 Posted June 8, 2006 Report Share Posted June 8, 2006 Hi, Fred A word of caution here: back when Matt Ginsberg was active inGIB development there was a mailing list with a few very keenparticipants (some of them are BBO members) and as you would expect there was a flood of allegedly strange GIB calls.Matt had devoted a lot of time and energy to these strangebids but, as far as I remember, there was no discernibleprogress in most cases. There is always the danger that whenyou fix something here, you unfix something else elsewhere.I am no expert in the matter, but it seems to me that whenthe sample of deals is very small then GIB is more likely todo something weird. There are also some "patented" idiosyncracies of GIB, liketransferring into a four-card suit that seem to work not bad. On the other hand, the single most frustrating habit of GIBis imho to think that pard holds the world when pard isprotecting, in auctions like 1H-pass-4H-? When you bid now 4S with QJxxxx and an opening bid, GIB will think you have a GF hand and propel you to slam. Anyway, good luck Nikos Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OscarKwok Posted June 8, 2006 Report Share Posted June 8, 2006 - GIB has been known to respond with a Jacoby transfer to partner's 1NT opening and then Pass the completion of the transfer with a very strong hand.an examplehttp://online.bridgebase.com/myhands/hands...rname=oscarkwok & interesting to found some GIB bid 1NT->6NTsome GIB bid 1NT->2D(transfer)->2H-> pass (obviously a wrong bid)! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
barmar Posted June 8, 2006 Report Share Posted June 8, 2006 And don't forget the bottom score, where GIB passed responder's 4♣ Gerber. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mpefritz Posted June 8, 2006 Report Share Posted June 8, 2006 Just wondering...has anyone see GIB transfer to spades and then pass with a big hand? This example plus 2 others I have seen have been transfers to hearts with big hands. Can we call this the Major Big GIB Bug? Any chance to use GIB with set hands to check this? fritz Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
uday Posted June 8, 2006 Report Share Posted June 8, 2006 We know about the "Major Big Gib Bug"; we are testing a fix, and if the fix is not worse than the problem we'll probably roll it into production sometime late tonight. The way the fix process goes is: we identify an issue, someone figures out which gib rules need tweaking and tweaks them, then we test to make sure nothing unrelated broke, then we roll it into production. The first such gib tweak went in the other day, when we instructed the mbt gibs to not rely solely on the rules for bidding but to exercise judgement as well. The second will be this "Major Bid GIB Bug" fix. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fred Posted June 8, 2006 Author Report Share Posted June 8, 2006 Hi, Fred A word of caution here: back when Matt Ginsberg was active inGIB development there was a mailing list with a few very keenparticipants (some of them are BBO members) and as you would expect there was a flood of allegedly strange GIB calls.Matt had devoted a lot of time and energy to these strangebids but, as far as I remember, there was no discernibleprogress in most cases. There is always the danger that whenyou fix something here, you unfix something else elsewhere.I am no expert in the matter, but it seems to me that whenthe sample of deals is very small then GIB is more likely todo something weird. There are also some "patented" idiosyncracies of GIB, liketransferring into a four-card suit that seem to work not bad. On the other hand, the single most frustrating habit of GIBis imho to think that pard holds the world when pard isprotecting, in auctions like 1H-pass-4H-? When you bid now 4S with QJxxxx and an opening bid, GIB will think you have a GF hand and propel you to slam. Anyway, good luck Nikos Thanks for your concern, Nikos, but the person we are working with was recommended by Matt as the one and only person in the world (besides Matt himself) who is really capable of making a difference. Early indications are that Matt's confidence in this person is well-founded. GIB (like the rest of us) will always make dumb bids from time to time, but I am hopeful that our members will see start to see noticable improvements almost immediately. However, this is a long term project so please be patient if it takes a while for us to address any particular area where there are currently problems. Fred GitelmanBridge Base Inc.www.bridgebase.com Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mike_P Posted June 9, 2006 Report Share Posted June 9, 2006 Relationship of this effort to our commercial, disk-resident version 6.1.5? -- Mike Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
uday Posted June 9, 2006 Report Share Posted June 9, 2006 I'm not sure if there is any, other than that Matt G. (author/owner of GIB) is at least peripherally involved and I'm sure that any improvements to the rules will be made available to GIB owners. 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.