Playing with Robots

[znjp]

I have two suggestions to improve play on BBO when using a robot partner. Really, it's one suggestion in two parts:

 

1) Let there be a setting that when the robot declares, I (the human) play the hand, as opposed to watching the robot play it.

 

or

 

2) At least let me remove the robot during play. Right now, if the robot wins the contract, I'm unable to remove the robot until the end of the hand.

 

The way I've been getting around this is to predict when the bidding is about to end and switch seats with the robot. Unfortunately, this leads to a little bit of cheating if I was wrong about my prediction.

 

Thanks

[uday]

You could play totalpoints deals, and redeal at any point

[barmar]

#1 is probably the most common request about robot tourneys.

[0 carbon]

#1 is probably the most common request about robot tourneys.

I agree! When all players are robots, then the human declarer should play the hand if their partner is the declarer. It should not even be a choice.

 

tOM

[uday]

I was discussing this with Ari and David ( one of our "Brass", insofar as we have any) just the other day

 

I don't think it would be a plus for me to be able to declare the hand. I think Josh says that he can play the hands faster than the bots, but I can't. Maybe it would be a good idea to make it mandatory for Robot Duplicates, and a user-preference ( and thus another element of the game ) for Robot Reward and casual table play.

[JoAnneM]

I would prefer to play the hand. I don't know that I am better than GIB but I have watched GIB go down on cold contracts because of totally weird plays early in the contract. I am not saying I would never go down on those contracts or that I would always get a higher score than the other tables, but with a contract where the bidding has exactly the same and my GIB partner is declaring, the hand the hand is essentially over after the bidding. Having South declare just adds another variable to the scoring.

[barmar]

Yeah, for Robot Rewards, where speed is more important than perfect play, I'm happy to let the bot declare. But I think I'm a better matchpoint declarer than GIB (and I don't generally consider myself a great matchpoint player), so I'd be happy to take over his seat in a duplicate.