Moneybridge vs. GIB

[basy]

Does anyone know what is the point in NOT switching declarers when GIB becomes the declarer in a contract? I could play more for my money, I could blame myself for losing my money and GIB's bidding is a stress enough to handle now it is topped with a much more often than one likes abysmal declarer play.

 

There must be a point for all this suffering but I fail to see it...

[jdonn]

I apologize on behalf of bbo for all of your suffering.

[Gerben42]

It's the same for everyone. If you are losing money, there's unfortunately no one else to blame...

 

BTW, I don't think GIB's declarer play is worse than that of the average club player. Now if you were expecting a World Class expert, that program does not yet exist (if you don't count Deep Finesse, which sees all the cards).

[TimG]

BTW, I don't think GIB's declarer play is worse than that of the average club player.

But on a par with self-proclaimed BBO experts.

[basy]

I'll live. Why dont You just switch those declarers instead? Or anyone...

[basy]

Certainly anyone can play a hand worse than GIB but then you can only blame yourself and certainly GIB has the same chance for screwing up a board for anyone. This is not the qeustion.

 

The question is if I am paying for every deal (5 cents) why GIB gets the fun? And why can't we match our declarer play with my human opponent more often? I dont see any purpose for GIB declaring. So I can watch him play?! Well, that is no fun at all, I guarantee. Especially when it is loosing my money at the same time.

 

I wish someone from BBO would explain this unexplainable.

[H_KARLUK]

I apologize on behalf of bbo for all of your suffering.

On behalf of bbo ?

[helene_t]

Agree with basy. When I play with Jack, I can chose whether I get to declare "his" boards. I think that's a nice option.

[basy]

Yeah, by the way, what would BBO guys say if at home, playing offline with 3 GIBs they couldnt be declarer instead of GIB? They would be upset I think. In spite of GIB not losing their money...

[Beto]

And why can't we match our declarer play with my human opponent more often?

Totally agree. If you are playing bridge for money against only one human, you should have as many chances as you can to prove who deserves to get the money. There is no sense wasting time while the GIBs are playing the hand.

[uday]

We want to have the human declare the hands. There are technical hurdles we have not clambered over ( but we will one of these days ).

 

U

[pdmunro]

Agree with basy. When I play with Jack, I can chose whether I get to declare "his" boards. I think that's a nice option.

If this happens, I prefer that the hands (and bidding) don't rotate. For some reason my brain gets confused if the hands rotate. If I am taking the computer's place as declarer, I prefer to now sit North (computer's seat) and declare the hand. This is how I configure Bridge Baron.

[hanp]

We want to have the human declare the hands. 

 

Please no, he plays worse than the average club player! Prrt Prrt, Technical difficulties, Prrrt.

[jdonn]

I apologize on behalf of bbo for all of your suffering.

On behalf of bbo ?

Sorry, on behalf of h_karluk as well.

[Rain]

I always want GIB to declare my hands. He plays better ; )

[Free]

We want to have the human declare the hands. There are technical hurdles we have not clambered over ( but we will one of these days ).

 

U

I agree that the human should be declarer. I hope you'll be able to fix it.

 

There is another (bigger imo) issue. I haven't played much lately but I think this "problem" still exists. Sometimes you're EW, and the next board you're NS, and a few boards later you're EW again,...

 

The problems I've encountered with switching sides are the following:

- Opps are VUL more often than you are. If they make game they get 600 total points, but if you make game you only get 400.

In a perfect world where everyone has the same amount of game scores, you'll lose huge.

- Opps get a lot more HCP (which usually results in more total points and money). I know I've done calculations in the past, and HCP NS vs HCP EW were about equal. However, if you switch sides now and then, your opps can get way more HCP than average.

Suppose you distribute HCP NS-EW every round as follows: 25-15, 15-25, 25-15,... In the long run, NS and EW will have the same amount of HCP. However, if you also switch sides every round, then your team may get 15HCP on average, while opps get 25 on average!

 

Note that most of the time I don't play more than 10 boards, so there's no real "long run". I don't know how many boards other people play on average.

I realize that both problems have played in my advantage too, but it's a luck factor we don't need imo.

[eyhung]

This is flawed thinking. If you switch sides, you are no less likely to average 20 HCP in the long run than if you stay there. Each hand is completely independent from the previous one, so on each hand you have an equally likely chance of getting more HCP than the opponents. It matters not whether you are sitting N/S or E/W. Sure, it's possible that the HCP could be 25-15, 15-25, 25-15 and it's possible to get the worst possible set. But it's equally likely for the HCP to be 25-15, 25-15, 25-15, and now staying in place at E/W makes you "lose". In the long run, it really doesn't matter WHERE you sit -- you'll get bad runs, you'll get good runs, and you'll average 20 HCP.

 

Similarly, if the side-switching is truly random, it does not make you more or less likely to be vulnerable before the cards are dealt. As long as the switching is truly random rather than deterministic, the vulnerabilities should average out in the long run.

[jdonn]

- Opps get a lot more HCP (which usually results in more total points and money).  I know I've done calculations in the past, and HCP NS vs HCP EW were about equal.  However, if you switch sides now and then, your opps can get way more HCP than average.

Sorry but this comment shows a complete and utter lack of understanding about probability and statistics of any kind. It is equivalent to the following argument.

 

You and I will both pick a card from each of 100 different decks and whoever picks more aces wins. However, if sometimes you pick first and sometimes I pick first then you can get way more aces than I get, which is not fair.

 

Do you know what "random" means?

[Lobowolf]

Wish I could remember the story and source completely accurately, but my recollection is that it's something to the effect that someone told Barry Crane that when faced with a pure 2-way guess for a queen, he did it differently depending on whether a certain card was in dummy, or in his hand, or something, and wanted Crane's validation. Crane told him it didn't matter as long as he did it the same way each time. As I recall, neither the anecdote nor Crane's comment was presented as being ironic. I'll try to find the excerpt and reference it.

 

It's like thinking that the long-term expectation on a coin flip depends on picking the same choice every time. Bizarre.

[jdonn]

Wish I could remember the story and source completely accurately, but my recollection is that it's something to the effect that someone told Barry Crane that when faced with a pure 2-way guess for a queen, he did it differently depending on whether a certain card was in dummy, or in his hand, or something, and wanted Crane's validation. Crane told him it didn't matter as long as he did it the same way each time. As I recall, neither the anecdote nor Crane's comment was presented as being ironic. I'll try to find the excerpt and reference it.

 

It's like thinking that the long-term expectation on a coin flip depends on picking the same choice every time. Bizarre.

I think his point is when it's a pure 2-way guess then you are only wasting brain cells to torture yourself over which way to guess, so by doing the same thing every time you can save a lot of stress and thought.

 

It's like being told that the long term expectation for a coin flip is the exact same no matter what you pick, so you can save the most thought for yourself by just picking the same thing every time.

[barmar]

Wish I could remember the story and source completely accurately, but my recollection is that it's something to the effect that someone told Barry Crane that when faced with a pure 2-way guess for a queen, he did it differently depending on whether a certain card was in dummy, or in his hand, or something, and wanted Crane's validation. Crane told him it didn't matter as long as he did it the same way each time. As I recall, neither the anecdote nor Crane's comment was presented as being ironic. I'll try to find the excerpt and reference it.

 

It's like thinking that the long-term expectation on a coin flip depends on picking the same choice every time. Bizarre.

Barry Crane's Rule is that the Queen is over the Jack in a minor, under the Jack in a major. Here's an article by Grant Baze that includes an anecdote about this.

 

http://www.blakjak.demon.co.uk/crane1.htm

 

If it has any basis in fact, it might have something to do with whether the opponents were more likely to compete with values in a major versus a minor, although I don't see how that relates their holding to the positions of your honors in the two hands. So it's most likely just a superstition, as Grant says.

[se12sam]

I agree with jdonn completely. Having a "rule" save a lot of stress and thought.

 

I also suspect (but have no way of proving) that Barry Crane's rule may have had some statistical validity in times of manually shuffled / duplicated boards. With the advent of computer dealt truly random hands, the value of the rule is only for peace of mind.

[pdmunro]

- Opps get a lot more HCP (which usually results in more total points and money).  I know I've done calculations in the past, and HCP NS vs HCP EW were about equal.  However, if you switch sides now and then, your opps can get way more HCP than average.

Sorry but this comment shows a complete and utter lack of understanding about probability and statistics of any kind. It is equivalent to the following argument.

 

You and I will both pick a card from each of 100 different decks and whoever picks more aces wins. However, if sometimes you pick first and sometimes I pick first then you can get way more aces than I get, which is not fair.

 

Do you know what "random" means?

Re the use of statistics:

 

I don't want to get too off-topic, but I have become interested in reading the ideas of W. Edwards Deming whose aim was to improve the quality of manufactured products in Japan and the USA. My paraphrase of his central thesis is that it is not really relevant to just pick a random sample of manufactured products and test their quality.

 

What is needed is a sampling along a time line. There will always be variabilty in the manufactured product. This is completely unavoidable and needs to be recognized as such. It is due to 1001 interactions that are part of any process.

 

What is important is that both the long-run performance and natural variabilty are determined and then monitored continuously. If it is observed, for any series of continuous time points, that the performance is consistently above or below the long-term average, management needs to recognize that special factors are at work and adopt remedies to return the process to its long-term average.

 

What has this to do with bridge? Maybe it's relevant to Free's concerns, maybe not.

 

But the key tenet of Deming is out there: Don't always think in terms of a simple average, there is a time component to events that we ignore at our peril.

 

In my own case, I know I try to monitor my alertnes before I play on BBO. I sometimes do this by playing a couple of hands on Bridge Baron. I am testing whether my brain is too tired to think, or not, as tiredness is the special factor that most often prevents me from performing at my true level.

 

In summary, I am just trying to keep my mind open to Deming's ideas. They are credited with playing a key role in the miracle that is modern Japanese manufacturing. I think they must have relevance in other fields, such as bridge and education, my key areas of interest.

[gnasher]

I also suspect (but have no way of proving) that Barry Crane's rule may have had some statistical validity in times of manually shuffled / duplicated boards. With the advent of computer dealt truly random hands, the value of the rule is only for peace of mind.

The rule that the queen lies over the jack comes from rubber bridge. You're more likely to play the queen on the jack than the jack on the queen. Thus the queen will tend to be immediately above the jack when the cards are face up, immediately below the jack when the cards are face down, and immediately over the jack when the cards are redealt.

 

The same applies at duplicate, for a different reason. When leading touching honours most people would lead the queen and then the jack. Again, the queen will end up under the jack with the cards face down, and over the jack when they're redealt.

 

This may change if there are lots of early claims. When sorting their hands, most people put the high cards behind the low cards. If a queen-jack combination is unplayed at the end of the hand, the queen will be redealt in front of the jack.

 

Naturally, none of this applies when the hands are randomly dealt. If I didn't know better, I'd say that anyone who seriously believed that this rule applied to computer-dealt hands was an idiot.

[gnasher]

What has this to do with bridge? Maybe it's relevant to Free's concerns, maybe not.

 

But the key tenet of Deming is out there: Don't always think in terms of a simple average, there is a time component to events that we ignore at our peril.

It's relevant only if you think that the dealer might have a systemic bias that varies with time. It seems unlikely that BBO's developers would have made such an error.