Board selection on Robot Tournaments..

[DanG4503]

I play those Robot tournaments (i.e. 1 human + 3 robots) because I found them useful as a good exercise..

I am referring to Just Declare tournaments where the board comes with the biding; now and then I get a board like this one:

 

[hv=bbo=y&lin=ZZ%7C%7Cpn%7CDanG4503%2CRobot%2CRobot%2CRobot%7Cst%7C%7Cmd%7C1SQJ853HKJ76DJCKQ9%2CST7HA853DQT952CT7%2CSAK42HQ9DA873CA84%2CS96HT42DK64CJ6532%7Csv%7CB%7Cah%7CBoard%207%7Cmb%7C1s%7Can%7CMajor%20suit%20opening%20--%205%2B%20%21S%3B%2011-21%20HCP%3B%2012-22%20total%20points%7Cmb%7Cp%7Cmb%7C2n%21%7Can%7CJacoby%20-%3E%20support%3B%20balanced%20--%204%2B%20%21S%3B%2013%2B%20total%20points%7Cmb%7Cp%7Cmb%7C3d%7Can%7CShortness%20--%201-%20%21D%3B%205%2B%20%21S%3B%2011-21%20HCP%3B%2012-22%20total%20points%7Cmb%7Cp%7Cmb%7C4c%7Can%7C1%2B%20%21H%3B%204%2B%20%21S%3B%20%21CA%3B%20no%20%21HA%3B%2016%2B%20total%20points%7Cmb%7Cp%7Cmb%7C5c%7Can%7CCue%20bid%20--%201%20%21D%3B%201%2B%20%21H%3B%205%2B%20%21S%3B%2021-%20HCP%3B%20%21CK%3B%20no%20%21DA%3B%20no%20%21HA%3B%2015-22%20total%20points%3B%20forcing%7Cmb%7Cp%7Cmb%7C5d%7Can%7CCue%20bid%20--%201%2B%20%21H%3B%204%2B%20%21S%3B%20%21CA%3B%20%21DA%3B%20no%20%21HA%3B%2016%2B%20total%20points%3B%20forcing%7Cmb%7Cp%7Cmb%7C5h%7Can%7CCue%20bid%20--%201%20%21D%3B%201%2B%20%21H%3B%205%2B%20%21S%3B%2021-%20HCP%3B%20%21CK%3B%20no%20%21DA%3B%20%21HK%2Cno%20%21HA%3B%2015-22%20total%20points%3B%20forcing%7Cmb%7Cp%7Cmb%7C6s%7Can%7C1%2B%20%21H%3B%204%2B%20%21S%3B%20%21CA%3B%20%21DA%3B%20no%20%21HA%3B%2017%2B%20total%20points%7Cmb%7Cp%7Cmb%7Cp%7Cmb%7Cp%7Cpc%7CHA%7Cpc%7CH9%7Cpc%7CH2%7Cpc%7CH6%7Cpc%7CH8%7Cpc%7CHQ%7Cpc%7CH4%7Cpc%7CH7%7Cpc%7CSA%7Cpc%7CS6%7Cpc%7CS3%7Cpc%7CS7%7Cpc%7CSK%7Cpc%7CS9%7Cpc%7CS5%7Cpc%7CST%7Cmc%7C12%7C]640|480[/hv]

 

After opening lead ♥A and another heart trick, Declarer pulls the trumps (2 tricks) and then is nothing else to play but claim 12 trick..

Looking at the board traveler, it was played 89 times with the same score: 50% !

Question is what is the purpose of such a flat board ? Because Novice or World Class player, your score is pulled towards 50%.

..And to make matters worse, the board is not played by everyone, just 89 times out of about 15000 players!

[smerriman]

Hands are dealt randomly. Hand constructing deals to always be 'interesting' would be incredibly difficult, and also introduce bias that would ruin the game a bit (though funnily, some conspiracy theorists believe this already happens :) ).

 

But yes, in tournaments with a small number of boards, being dealt flat hands means you can't achieve a high score, which makes overall leaderboards where people play different boards pretty meaningless. But it's BBOs method of preventing cheating.

[pescetom]

Hands are dealt randomly. Hand constructing deals to always be 'interesting' would be incredibly difficult, and also introduce bias that would ruin the game a bit (though funnily, some conspiracy theorists believe this already happens :) ).

 

But yes, in tournaments with a small number of boards, being dealt flat hands means you can't achieve a high score, which makes overall leaderboards where people play different boards pretty meaningless. But it's BBOs method of preventing cheating.

You can construct more goulashy deals automatically by dealing randomly and excluding deals with more balanced hands. That doesn't guarantee 'interesting' problems, but it goes in that direction and I don't see a bias problem if the system is predefined.

 

So you can't cheat, but your result isn't meaningful either. Sounds like baby with bathwater to me.

[smerriman]

I'm not sure how excluding balanced hands would 'go in that direction', remembering that we're talking about Just Declare tournaments, where all bidding is done for you, and it's only the play that matters.

[pescetom]

I'm not sure how excluding balanced hands would 'go in that direction', remembering that we're talking about Just Declare tournaments, where all bidding is done for you, and it's only the play that matters.

 

Sorry, I missed that there is no auction (I avoid any three robot stuff, although I concede that always playing as Declarer might be no worse than defending with one).

But maybe the principle is valid all the same: it would be relatively easy using DD analysis to delete from a random sequence of deals the hands that are less "interesting", however that is defined ("uncertain outcome after the robot choice of lead", or whatever).

[hrothgar]

This has been one of the basic features of Duplicate Bridge since time immemorial.

 

If you play a naturally flat board against a very strong pair, this is going to help your score

If you play a naturally flat board against a very weak pair, this is going to hurt your score

 

It evens out in the long run

 

Trying to 'fix' the, by biasing the deals is probably going to break a lot more stuff than it fixes.

 

If you really care, go through the hand records after the event, throw out the flat boards, and rescore stuff but don't expect the rest of us to put up with all the idiocy that trying to bias the hand generators is going to cause.