constrained hand option for real play?

[rbforster]

I really enjoy the "Constrained hands" feature in the practice bidding rooms. When you want to work on a particular aspect of your partnership bidding (slam hands, 1♠ openers, whatever), it's nice to set up a table where you can get just the hand types you want to focus on. This is very nice for practicing uncontested auctions, but it's much clunkier for dealing with competition (the option to have the host bid isn't great, he can't see the opposing hands and just makes a random bid, etc).

 

I would love for this to be possible to set similar hand constraints at a table that could take 4 real players. For example, have a setting that allows 4 players to sit at the partnership bidding table and allow constraint options on all 4 hands. This way you could practice for example bidding over a 3♠ preempt - just set the dealer to have a weak hand with 7 spades and shortness and see what happens. I know high level decisions are an area I'd love to improve but they don't come up often enough to really learn from them (at least for me). If I played a whole session of them I'm sure I'd get better!

[Cascade]

There are a number of options you can try:

 

1. You can have GIB bid the opposing hands. This seems to work reasonably well but has some limitations since GIB has a particular style.

 

2. You can generate hands and load them to a tournament or a teamsmatch or a teaching table.

 

If you load hands to a teaching table one player can see all of the hands but you can overcome this with a fifth or by covering them up on your screen.

[matmat]

seems useful enough :P

[brianshark]

Use GIB for competitive bidding. It's solid practice. I never understand people who use partnership bidding with opponents passing throughout.