GIB error #4574598

[TylerE]

Playing in the 11PM $5 game...

 

I open 1NT in 3rd or 4th seat, on 2-4-4-3 shape, I think, certainly 2=4 in the majors. The idiot savant staymans the hand, then bids....4♠ over my 2♥ bid, which is alerted as 6+ ♠. 10-12 HCP. GIB flops with a 5=4=1=3 6 count. Despite that, 4♥ has play, whereas the 5-2 spade fit was down at least 2. Ended up coming 2nd by about 150pts...

[Guest Jlall]

When will these posts stop? What is the point of them? Because they seem pretty damn whiney. If you do not like playing with GIB then stop playing in these tournaments. If you like playing in these tournaments and accept that Gib sometimes makes unorthodox and/or BAD bids just like anyone else you will play with then try to use your brain and realize that this happens to EVERYONE. It is not like gib is singling you out. This is part of the randomness/luck involved in these tournaments.

 

If you are going to try and say that you posted this under the guise of helping point out a flaw in GIB and trying to get it fixed then I will really lol.

[helene_t]

http://www.geocities.com/helene_thygesen/trumphcoup.GIF

I wasn't so pleased with my p's 6♥ bid but maybe he took some negative inference from my (possibly wrong) failure to rebid my diamonds.

 

Anyway, GIB surprised me by making this contract on a trump coup. I don't think many random pick-up partner's would have done that.

[jtfanclub]

When will these posts stop? What is the point of them?

Did the title of the post fool you into thinking it was about something else? Did his writing the post somehow keep you from writing something useful? Or did you just come here to whine because you're bored. Who cares why he posted it?

 

GIB doesn't have random errors. It has recognizable patterns of errors. If you can't use the information on these threads to your advantage, that's your problem. For example, if you were defending against this hand, wouldn't it be nice to know that even though GIB claims his bid shows 10-12, in fact he can have 6?

 

Why would you want other people to stop posting things that can make you money?

[pclayton]

I can see the purpose of these posts if someone is going to try to make an active effort to start reprogramming GIB. Think of it as responses to Beta testing.

 

I think Fred mentioned that this is in the works, but its slow in coming.

 

If the wizards want to start a section called "Suggestions for GIB", I would have plenty to say, but I'm not going to just bitch about GIBs randomly.

 

I won't even mention the very, very bad day I had several months ago when my bankroll was deleted by about $100 due to a "bad" GIB that seemed to go haywire - redoubling everything in sight, pulling penalty doubles from a +1100 to a minus 1100. It was like playing with a junior on a 72 hour bender that had about 12 Monster drinks.

[matmat]

I won't even mention the very, very bad day I had several months ago when my bankroll was deleted by about $100 due to a "bad" GIB that seemed to go haywire - redoubling everything in sight, pulling penalty doubles from a +1100 to a minus 1100. It was like playing with a junior on a 72 hour bender that had about 12 Monster drinks.

That wasn't GIB. that was me.

[helene_t]

I knew it! When the two GIBs made that stripe-tail ape double and I made 5♣xx+2, I thought, this isn't GIB at all, it must be Mat and Phil who have hacked his account :)

[Guest Jlall]

Did the title of the post fool you into thinking it was about something else?

I thought it might have been some kind of constructive post such as "Gib made this error, I think Gib can be improved by implementing this soltuion to this problem..." We all know that Gib sometimes simulates an insufficient amount of hands and then makes a bad bid. This is not something that is going to be fixed, Gib will make some bad bids and plays, as does everyone else. If this post was at all constructive rather than "woe is me, I lost a big mac because gib made a bad bid or play" and some kind of suggestion to help improve gib, that would be great and would fit the title of the thread.

 

Did his writing the post somehow keep you from writing something useful? 

 

My post may be useful in dissuading similarly whiney threads from OP or others. This will be beneficial to the community. Bad posters get ripped into routinely, that is the way forums work, and it helps improve quality. Often times the trolls leave because of this treatment, but sadly some like you are too clueless and stay. I know OP is not a clueless troll so maybe he will think next time "wow, nobody cares when I whine about GIB and GIB makes errors with everyone, maybe my next post should be a suggested solution on fixing a gib error, or maybe I won't post about this next time." I wonder what would happen if all of your partners posted about mistakes you made!

 

Or did you just come here to whine because you're bored.

 

Whining is making a thread such as "Gib made this error, and I lost x amount of money because of it, and that really sucks!" You should rethink your definition of whining.

 

Who cares why he posted it?

 

It is much more forgivable to make a bad post with good intentions. Making a whiney, useless thread for the purpose of whining deserves to get flamed. I do not think OP would be so disingenuous to claim that he made this post with constructive purposes since it would obviously be a lie given the tone of the post. Some people with very low IQs can probably not distinguish things like that though.

 

GIB doesn't have random errors. It has recognizable patterns of errors.

 

I suppose it depends on how you define "random" but to me if GIB makes one bid 99 times in 100, and another bid 1 time in 100 when given the same situation 100 times, your partner being the 1 in 100 that simulates 4S to be the correct bid opposite your range of hands is pretty "random." You got unlucky, too bad. Regardless, I never said that GIB made random errors, I said that it's errors add an element of randomness and luck to the game. This is clearly true. Luck is not a bad thing though, if there were no luck then people like you would not play for money and it would be only the very best players since the bad players could not delude themselves into thinking they are good/can win.

 

 

If you can't use the information on these threads to your advantage, that's your problem. For example, if you were defending against this hand, wouldn't it be nice to know that even though GIB claims his bid shows 10-12, in fact he can have 6?

 

How will you use this information to help you? You did not know that GIB will bid whatever it thinks is the most +EV bid based on the simulations it runs regardless of what that bid means? What GIB bids and what GIB has often have little relation to each other when GIB is placing the contract. GIB does not bid based on what it "should" have.

 

Why would you want other people to stop posting things that can make you money?

 

The fact that you could not deduce the above on your own and had to read that GIB bid 4S with 5 when it showed 6 means that these posts are helping to educate you while they are not educating me at all since I have a brain, so they would actually seem to be counter productive to me earning money. However, I really do not care at all about any of that, I care more about the quality of the forums and trying to stop this trend of whiney posts about GIB.

 

Thanks for your input though.

[barmar]

I'm glad I decided not to post the other day when GIB passed my cue bid on the 6 level and we played in our 4-2 fit instead of making slam in the suit we agreed on.

[USViking]

When will these posts stop? What is the point of them? Because they seem pretty damn whiney...

 

I think the comments above are shocking.

 

Any customer who purchases non-conforming product

is fully entitled to post complain in any forum, whether

the bug is in GIB, or in a Big Mac.

 

In the case of a bug in a Big Mac the customer would get

his money back. I would hope the same is true in the case

of GIB.

 

I am aware of the fact that GIB management includes

people who are world class experts in two fields: bridge

and computers.

 

I would be suprised if GIB management failed to appreciate

customer complaint for what customer complaint truly is:

a guide to quality improvement and quality assurance.

 

That is to say, a guide to customers who happily spend

increasing amounts of money.

[fred]

When will these posts stop? What is the point of them? Because they seem pretty damn whiney...

 

I think the comments above are shocking.

 

Any customer who purchases non-conforming product

is fully entitled to post complain in any forum, whether

the bug is in GIB, or in a Big Mac.

 

In the case of a bug in a Big Mac the customer would get

his money back. I would hope the same is true in the case

of GIB.

 

I am aware of the fact that GIB management includes

people who are world class experts in two fields: bridge

and computers.

 

I would be suprised if GIB management failed to appreciate

customer complaint for what customer complaint truly is:

a guide to quality improvement and quality assurance.

 

That is to say, a guide to customers who happily spend

increasing amounts of money.

Are you really suggesting that we refund people's MBT entry fees every time they perceive that their GIB partner makes a mistake? Or do you think it would have been more appropriate for us to give the OP the prize money he thinks he would have received had his GIB not cost him this money?

 

Hopefully I have misunderstood what you were trying to say because this suggestion is truly ludicrous, especially coming from a person who has never played in a single MBT and who has never rented GIB (at least under the id USViking).

 

For one thing, how do you suggest we go about deciding on which of the 100,000+ hands that GIB plays every day in MBTs its "mistakes" are refund-worthy? Besides that, you do not seem to appreciate that these contests as they exist now are completely fair - all players have the same partners and opponents. If we were to start arbitrarily picking and choosing which GIB errors we refund-worthy then that would not be fair.

 

I do happen to agree with the general sentiment of Jlall's post: many posts that complain about things like specific instances of perceived poor play by GIB (or perceived poor rulings by ACBL TDs for that matter) amount to little more than sour grapes by people who get frustrated by their perception that their lack of success in a given tournament on BBO is not "their fault".

 

That being said, I can sympathize with feeling frustrated when these things happen. What I think that some of these posters don't realize is that few people want to hear about such frustrations (just like in real life bridge few people enjoy listening to players who constantly complain about how their partners' stupidities are the only reasons they don't win the Blue Ribbon Pairs every year).

 

Of course we care about the quality of the products and services that we sell. That is why, when we get a complaint about a giving ACBL TD's ruling, we do something about it (we investigate the facts, check with the authorities in Memphis if necessary, and explain the situation to the TD if it turns out the complaint is justified). That is also why I keep a file of 1000s of hands sent by our users that contain what I consider to be "unacceptable" mistakes made by GIB. As soon as we are in a position to start preventing such mistakes, that is exactly what we are going to try to do.

 

But it will always remain the case that GIB (not to mention every human partner you will ever have) will always take actions that you don't like. That's just too bad, but I believe that most of our MBT regulars have learned that this happens to everyone. Those who can control the inevitable frustration and just go on to the next hand will tend to do better than those who let such occurances ruin their days.

 

Anyone who actually plays against GIB is more than welcome to send me (fred@bridgebase.com) more hands for my GIB-mistakes-file. Those users who are especially helpful and constructive might even find that they receive some free BB$ as a result.

 

Fred Gitelman

Bridge Base Inc.

www.bridgebase.com

[nige1]

GIB is OK. If GIB were improved, then more players in robot tournaments would finish with negative scores.

 

Robot Race tournament rankings show that most players finish below average.

i.e. robot-robot partnerships tend to beat human-robot partnerships.

 

Remarkable, when you consider that only humans have the option, with a fair score, to stop before the end of a hand on which they are destined for a poor result.

 

A further confirmation that GIB already plays much better than the average BBO player.

 

Not that robots are perfect :angry:. Yesterday, a robot , defending against a slam contract, won the first trick. It then underled an ace to let the contract make :)

[jtfanclub]

Robot Race tournament rankings show that most players finish below average.

i.e. robot-robot partnerships tend to beat human-robot partnerships.

 

Remarkable, when you consider that the that only humans have the option, with a fair score, to stop before the end of a hand on which they are destined for a poor result.

 

A further confirmation that GIB plays much better than the average BBO player.

Actually, that's not true.

 

Let's say that if I come in 4th, I win money, and if I come in 5th, I don't.

 

If I'm currently in 9th with a good distance between me and 4th, I will take all sorts of wild gambling actions to do better. This is because ending up one point below 4th and 10,000 points below 4th is the same result.

 

Likewise, if you're in 1st by a comfortable margin, you should be extra cautious- just bid game even if slam is 99% because, again, winning by 1 and winning by 10,000 is the same result.

 

Meanwhile, the robots bid equally badly no matter how far ahead or behind they are. If you don't understand why that that would be bad tactics for humans, maybe a mathematician here can help. The net result is that even though the bidding by GIB is terrible, and in many cases the explanation for a bid is simply wrong, humans still end up below average over the long term. If humans got their money back if they ended up above 0, then a vast majority of humans would end up above 0.

 

Besides, since GIB doesn't read its own explanations, it doesn't get fooled by them, and since human doubles seems to always be interpreted as takeout, GIB can't be punished when the robot opponents go nuts.

[pigpenz]

glad i didnt post also when i asked for aces and GIB passed.

It would be nice if someone time someone would make an effort to try and do some programming work on GIB, after all its still running on the what it was left at back in 2002 I believe.

[USViking]

I appreciate the nearly flawless excellence of the Main Room

of the BBO site. It is so good I would be willing to pay a (not too steep)

fee for using it (absolutely non-refundable).

 

The many abilities of the site owner command the highest respect.

 

This part of his reply to my earlier post is close to the mark:

 

...Anyone who actually plays against GIB is more than welcome to send me (fred@bridgebase.com) more hands for my GIB-mistakes-file. Those users who are especially helpful and constructive might even find that they receive some free BB$ as a result...

 

However, the rest of the reply was in my opinion so ineffective

that I was provoked into writing a nearly sentence by sentence rebuttal.

 

Then after thinking it over I decided it would be ungrateful to engage

in extensive public dispute with someone to whom I am in debt for so much.

 

Therefore I will post only the first sentence of my rebuttal,

and bid this thread farewell.

 

 

 

 

Are you really suggesting that we refund people's MBT entry fees every time they perceive that their GIB partner makes a mistake? 

No, I am suggesting that entry fees be refunded based on YOUR perception

that a mistake has been made.

[helene_t]

No, I am suggesting that entry fees be refunded based on YOUR perception

that a mistake has been made.

If those terms applied to the software industry in general then there would be no software industry. My employer pays lots of money every year for renewing our contracts for leased software. We find a lot of bugs in that software. Do we get any discount for that? Nope. They don't even thank us for reporting those bugs.

 

And the bugs in GIB are even a lot less serious than the bugs in office software. They don't cost any money - the chance that I loose due to a GIB bug is the same as the chance that I win due to a GIB bug.

 

Besides: are you seriously suggesting that Fred should hire a paid GIB-expert to review bug claims of $0.25?

 

GIB makes different kind of errors than do humans and therefore the GIB errors may seem more "absurd". But over-all they play quite well, as Nige1 points out. Everything is relative. They may not form competent opposition for experts but they certainly do for me and most other BBO members.

 

GIB is probably not at the same level as WBridge and Jack (and the fact that they neither play nor understand non-SA bidding is for some a serious limitation for there use for training purposes), but the fact that GIB is integrated in BBO allows them to be used for a lot of purposes. And for non-frequent users they are relatively cheap.

 

If you disagree with all of the above - fine. Then just don't use GIBs.

[pigpenz]

Anyone who actually plays against GIB is more than welcome to send me (fred@bridgebase.com) more hands for my GIB-mistakes-file. Those users who are especially helpful and constructive might even find that they receive some free BB$ as a result.

 

Fred Gitelman

Bridge Base Inc.

www.bridgebase.com

I think it would be nice to have just a GIB based sub forum...but in the past it was noted there are so called techniquez or tricks involved in learning how to bid and play with GIB. The post stated that it was part of the learning experience with GIB.

 

That it why no hands are posted under myhands from MBT.

 

I myself think GIB is ok, defends well plays well, bids ????

[barmar]

Yeah, its defense is annoyingly good. It frequently finds just the right shift, I can practically sense Chthonic-like arrogance coming from the bots. Only once in a great while will it fail to take its setting trick.