more natural alternative to "Best Hand" setting

[ioxjzl]

Dear BBO community,

 

I have a suggestion for an alternative for the "best hand" setting. Instead of rotating the hand to obtain the best hand, you could rotate until you have a hand with >= 10 HCP. In this way, you do not have information about the other hands, and e.g. your partner is still unlimited. This "good hand" setting still guarantees a lot of action, but it does not make the game unnatural because of all the extra information.

[brecherdc]

Totally agree!!! I've been meaning to suggest this for a while.

[tomkron]

Another variant would be to rotate the hands such that the human or his partner has the best hand, choosing which at random. Now even if you have a good hand your partner could have a better one.

[pescetom]

This "good hand" setting still guarantees a lot of action, but it does not make the game unnatural because of all the extra information.

Less unnatural, but I think you still have the inference that RHO is more likely than natural to have less than 10 HCP (assuming clockwise elimination).

[helene_t]

Less unnatural, but I think you still have the inference that RHO is more likely than natural to have less than 10 HCP (assuming clockwise elimination).

Yes but you shouldn't have any information other than that you have 10+ which you would know anyway. Just chose one of the rotations that give S 10+ at random.

I think it's a good idea.

[pescetom]

Yes but you shouldn't have any information other than that you have 10+ which you would know anyway. Just chose one of the rotations that give S 10+ at random.

I think it's a good idea.

Yes, if the rotational direction is random rather than fixed then you have almost no useful inferences.

Much better than "Best Hand", not that I see anything wrong with just playing whatever was dealt.

[barmar]

Yes, if the rotational direction is random rather than fixed then you have almost no useful inferences.

Much better than "Best Hand", not that I see anything wrong with just playing whatever was dealt.

FYI, the current code doesn't rotate, so there's no rotation direction. After doing the random deal, it finds the hand with the most points and swaps it with the human's. If there's a tie for the most points, it picks one of them at random.

 

So to implement this suggestion, instead of looking for the hands with the most points, we look for all the hands with >10 points. Then the same "pick a random one" code can be used among them.

 

And for the suggestion that we give the best hand to either the human or their partner bot, we could randomly choose North or South as the hand to swap with this.

[pescetom]

 

 

So to implement this suggestion, instead of looking for the hands with the most points, we look for all the hands with >10 points. Then the same "pick a random one" code can be used among them.

 

Make that ">=10" right from the start :)

[ioxjzl]

FYI, the current code doesn't rotate, so there's no rotation direction. After doing the random deal, it finds the hand with the most points and swaps it with the human's. If there's a tie for the most points, it picks one of them at random.

 

So to implement this suggestion, instead of looking for the hands with the most points, we look for all the hands with >10 points. Then the same "pick a random one" code can be used among them.

 

And for the suggestion that we give the best hand to either the human or their partner bot, we could randomly choose North or South as the hand to swap with this.

 

You should definitely swap with the human, as otherwise the human with <10hcp has knowledge about their partners hand. The swapping idea is indeed much better than rotating. I hope it will be implemented!