Cardplay Could be Improved

[calm01]

in 3C the robot declarer spade holding was 87 in hand and Q105 in dummy.

 

Dummy has a guaranteed entry in trunps but that is another story..

 

Declarer led a spade towards dummy and played the Q when the 7 was covered by the 6. The Queen loses to the King.

 

Winning the return, another spade was led towards the 106 in dummy, On the Ace the 10 was thrown. What a waste as my Jack, now singleton fell under partners Ace.

 

One can question the wisdom of playing the Queen on the first round, but it makes no sense to play the ten on the second round.

 

If it was a human declarer one would think of naivety or grandstanding - as it was a robot then its card play leaves something to be desired.

 

Surely the lowest of losers must be standard choice unless unblocking or endplaying comsiderations override.

[calm01]

Sometimes the Robot cardplay defies any logic I can devise. Maybe you know better.

 

The bidding was:

 

1D P 1H 2D

3C p 3N all pass

 

The lead was the Queen of hearts.

 

Dummy goes down with:

 

AK95

J

AJ ($

KJ84

 

Third hand (robot) opponent holds:

 

102

1076432

-

109652

 

plays the 10 of hearts!.

 

This is handy as I hold AK985 hearts.

 

Can you devise any reason for the robots card play other than random?

[barmar]

GIB's card play is mostly based on dealing out hands consistent with the bididng and play so far, and then doing double dummy analysis of all the possible cards it can play to this trick. In this case, in most of the hands it dealt, it didn't matter which heart it played, so it picked one at random.

 

I think it's been suggested before that in such situations, it should be programmed to play the lowest card. This makes it much less likely to give up a trick if the hand does actually match its simulations.

 

This rule would also solve the problem of GIB's frequent practice of helping you find the queen by inserting it. It does this because again, it thinks it doesn't matter -- since it bases its defense on a double dummy analysis, it plays as if you're also double dummy, so it "knows" you'll take the finesse the right way, so it's not giving up anything.