Anyone good enough to profit consistently in robot reward/rebate tournaments?

[riverwalk3]

Title says it all. It seems like the field is very strong (way stronger than those in the free daylong tournaments - where I can average around 60%), so generally I'm below average (let alone 55%). I guess this is to be expected, as making a profit should normatively be very hard.

[smerriman]

Robot Rebate is extremely hard to make a profit off, given you have to make the cut 2/3 of the tournaments you enter, and 55% isn't easy even if you have an edge over the field.

 

Looking at my stats it appears I'm only making it 1/3 of the time (played 522, won 174), not even close to breaking even. (There are much better players at these than me though.)

 

As for Robot Reward, that one is definitely possible (though it involves significantly different tactics to normal bridge). I received a $10 BB gift about 2.5 years ago, and was up $148 a month later (have since lost about half of that, probably mainly due to those Robot Rebates :( ). I'm finding it a little more difficult now given the demise of the quick Flash version though.

 

I think Leo Lasota is the most famous at being able to profit off the robots.

[smerriman]

Also, the Zenith daylong which was added very recently is now much more appealing than Robot Rebate, given the larger number of boards and entries (and returns). It's definitely possible for better players to make some gains off that one.

[shyams]

There was a short period of time some 3-4 years ago when I won some 20 Robot Rebate 55% games in a row. It made me think I was really gifted. In reality, it was just a lucky streak I guess.

 

I think there was a time when I tracked my performance on Robot Rebate 55% and discovered that I would make the 55% cutoff under half the time which meant that my expected loss per 55% game was 0.5 BB$. I was sure that I did not have the skills to win consistently at this game. However, I still used to play it often mostly because I used to think the skill levels involved were very high.

 

I didn't really find myself enamoured by the Reward game. The skills were so materially different that the few times I tried, it just didn't work for me. I had heard that one of the past BBF posters (jdonn) was an absolute master at Robot Reward. He probably made enough BB$s out of the game that he never had to buy them from BBO ever again.

 

Finally, I agree with smerriman that Zenith Daylong is now much more appealing than Robot Rebate 55%. The only downside here is that you can only play once a day --- unlike Robot Rebate 55% which is available many times an hour.

[johnu]

I think Leo Lasota is the most famous at being able to profit off the robots.

I remember Leo writing that he paid for almost every ACBL robot tournament with winnings from the robot rebate/reward tournaments. Since he was winning around 3000 ACBL masterpoints a year, and the most you could win was a max .90 masterpoint in the 12 board tournaments, he must have been winning at least $5000+ a year, probably much more.

[nige1]

Also, the Zenith daylong which was added very recently is now much more appealing than Robot Rebate, given the larger number of boards and entries (and returns). It's definitely possible for better players to make some gains off that one.

Zenith seems vulnerable to abuse. For example, If you have multiple accounts, can you play Zenith, serially, using one account after another, incrementing your profits?

[smerriman]

Zenith seems vulnerable to abuse. For example, If you have multiple accounts, can you play Zenith, serially, using one account after another, incrementing your profits?

Perhaps, though since you have to pay for $BB, it's considerably easier for BBO to detect this by checking the payment method. Given it still uses deal pooling, you'd also still need to have a considerable number of accounts before getting a serious benefit out of playing the same tournament.

 

And since you can't "cash out" the $BB, are you really gaining much by doing so?

[nige1]

Perhaps, though since you have to pay for $BB, it's considerably easier for BBO to detect this by checking the payment method. Given it still uses deal pooling, you'd also still need to have a considerable number of accounts before getting a serious benefit out of playing the same tournament.

 

And since you can't "cash out" the $BB, are you really gaining much by doing so?

OK. But there are many ways to skin a cat. For instance, you can play Zenith early and copy the deals to your friends.

[barmar]

OK. But there are many ways to skin a cat. For instance, you can play Zenith early and copy the deals to your friends.

That's the point of deal pools.

 

While it's possible that some friends will play the same deals as you, no individual friend is likely to get more than 1. So each of them might have a leg up on one deal, but they're on their own for the rest. If you're not good enough to do well on your own, an edge on one deal probably won't make that much difference.

 

If you have a large enough circle of friends, I suppose a few of you could play early, copy the deals to the rest of the group, and they each might get advantages on 2 or 3 hands.

 

Meanwhile, this is all costing you money. If you buy thousands of lottery tickets you have a much better chance of winning, but when you don't you're out megabucks.