[diana_eva]

Disable card animation too. That makes a little difference. I play +30 boards without making a special effort, and i'm not very good at races.

[barmar]

I use hand diagram mode, there is no animation.

[diana_eva]

JDonn, Leftfoot and Leo LaSota - bidding strategies

[jamegumb]

 diana_eva, on 2011-November-05, 08:17, said:

JDonn, Leftfoot and Leo LaSota - bidding strategies

Those are useful, though probably not as useful as just going through this thread.

I'm still chasing Leo's record. Got 16670 just now, which is my all-time best. And I missed 2 grand slams in that one (stopping in 6 both times), and also blew two vulnerable games (misbidding one, misplaying another). Most everything else fell into place, though (as it has to if you're going to score this high).

Needed most of those points - jakisjacek scored 14410 and finished second.

[AAr]

I think I have one to add.

GIB opponents NEVER seem to underlead Kings against suit contracts, but often leads Singletons. ALWAYS play the ACE from AQ--- in Dummy against suit contracts.

At least from my observation. It took me a while to learn this, as I would too often play the Queen from dummy on such leads, causing me to go down in many makable games. Now, I always know to play the Ace, guarding against a ruff, and know the RHO definitely has the King, and the opening leader might have a Singleton or the RHO possibly having the Singleton King. Is this correct?

[barmar]

I wouldn't say "never", but I agree that they're much less likely to do it than humans. Only take the finesse if it looks like the only way to make the contract.

[AAr]

If you know the finesse will lose, wouldn't the only time to take it is if either it will endplay the opponent with the King, or dropping the Singleton King will not make the contract but winning the finesse will? I know there are such hands, but I don't envision many. It seems obvious to play for the K-Drop every time against GIB to me. We can put the "Ten Ever, Eleven Never Rule" out the window against GIB. Even with an EIGHT-card fit, when you KNOW the RHO has the King, you would play for the K-Drop.

I think it pays to play the Ace every time, and hope that the King drops Singleton (which is still at least possible).

[AAr]

After my observation about whether GIB underleads Kings and whether to play the Ace from Dummy or taking the finesse, I have a more important question about what do to in this situation in Robot Race, Best Hand, and Bingo tourneys.

You have a minimum third seat opener. You want to pass it out if you could. If you HAVE to play it, you want your side to declare, and hope to make a bid. You do NOT want to defend, and you have no safe action if the LHO opens in the fourth seat. Should I:

A: Pass and hope that the hand does get passed out.
B: Bid, at least making it more likely that my side will declare when the hand does get played.
C: It depends on the TYPE of Robot tourney (Best hand, Robot Race, Bingo, etc.).
D: It can depend on other factors. (Please explain.)
E: Combination of C and D.

Making the wrong action in these situations have been KILLING me in these types of tourneys lately (Best Hand, Robot Race, AND Bingo), so I want to know what is the best here?

Thanks!

[jamegumb]

 AAr, on 2012-January-25, 16:20, said:

After my observation about whether GIB underleads Kings and whether to play the Ace from Dummy or taking the finesse, I have a more important question about what do to in this situation in Robot Race, Best Hand, and Bingo tourneys.

You have a minimum third seat opener. You want to pass it out if you could. If you HAVE to play it, you want your side to declare, and hope to make a bid. You do NOT want to defend, and you have no safe action if the LHO opens in the fourth seat. Should I:

A: Pass and hope that the hand does get passed out.
B: Bid, at least making it more likely that my side will declare when the hand does get played.
C: It depends on the TYPE of Robot tourney (Best hand, Robot Race, Bingo, etc.).
D: It can depend on other factors. (Please explain.)
E: Combination of C and D.

Making the wrong action in these situations have been KILLING me in these types of tourneys lately (Best Hand, Robot Race, AND Bingo), so I want to know what is the best here?

Thanks!

In playing in any tournament with unlimited boards, I'd almost always choose A.

FWIW, when you have minimal (~12 pt) hands, you've got more information than in a normal game when opps bid. Your partner has to have *something* - even if both opponents also have 12-point maximums, partner's got 4 points. So later competition is a bit safer.

I'd also argue that if you're able to analyze that you have no safe action if RHO opens, you're thinking too much (during the tournament) about these hands. Time is points is BB$.

[diana_eva]

 AAr, on 2012-January-25, 16:20, said:

After my observation about whether GIB underleads Kings and whether to play the Ace from Dummy or taking the finesse, I have a more important question about what do to in this situation in Robot Race, Best Hand, and Bingo tourneys.

You have a minimum third seat opener. You want to pass it out if you could. If you HAVE to play it, you want your side to declare, and hope to make a bid. You do NOT want to defend, and you have no safe action if the LHO opens in the fourth seat. Should I:

A: Pass and hope that the hand does get passed out.
B: Bid, at least making it more likely that my side will declare when the hand does get played.
C: It depends on the TYPE of Robot tourney (Best hand, Robot Race, Bingo, etc.).
D: It can depend on other factors. (Please explain.)
E: Combination of C and D.

Making the wrong action in these situations have been KILLING me in these types of tourneys lately (Best Hand, Robot Race, AND Bingo), so I want to know what is the best here?

Thanks!

My strategy:

- Always pass in Robot Reward tourney.
- In Robot Race and Bingo Race hands are duplicated, so you may consider opening if you think it's likely that the field will open as well. I would still pass, but this info may be useful, esp in Bingo Race where you need partscores.
- Depends what you need on the Bingo grid in $1 Bingo, Just play to the grid and don't worry about what opps do.

As jamegumb says, don't think too much about what might happen, just play as fast as you can.


As for the robot underleading King, I think it does underlead king often enough to consider finessing, even though it's probably true that GIB tends to make neutral leads more often than humans.

[jamegumb]

 barmar, on 2011-April-18, 19:10, said:

I played a couple of races as fast as I could after posting that, and I still only managed about 30 hands (including passouts).

I wonder: are the people who are good at these races also good at video games? It seems like you need lightning fast reflexes just to be able to play the cards that quickly, and that's similar to video game skills. Even at the end of a hand, when I'm cashing top tricks, cross-ruffing, or giving up all my remaining losers (i.e. situations where I would have claimed or conceded IRL) it takes 1-2 second just to click on the cards.

Just to answer this: yeah, I played a fair amount of video games in my youth. But the best "training" for playing this is probably trying to set records on Minesweeper.

 barmar, on 2011-April-18, 19:10, said:

I wish I could watch one of you play a hand, so I could see your mouse flying back and forth.

Like the robots, it takes a while at the start. But at the end of hands often it's moving the mouse up and down as fast as you can. While trying to arrange plays where you lead something your partner has a singleton in (so that it automatically drops).

I know about enabling "auto-play singletons", but that only helps on a few tricks; I try to arrange to make this apply as much as possible, but that often requires a little extra thinking to play tricks in the right order, so it may just break even.

[hamish32]

Playing robot races is not like bridge, I play between 20 - 25 hands per game and pass out between 10 - 20 hands.

Bidding:

Non vul i dont open unless i am sure of game and slam is possible so 1st seat 20+ bal or 16+ if extream shape. I dont open non vul in 3rd seat but if partner has opened i either bid 3nt or raise to 4 of his major.

Vul i open 1NT with 16 - 17 Bal I open 1NT even with a singleton or 54 shapes, i open a suit if i have about 14+ with extream shape. In 3rd seat i will open if i have 20+ bal or 16+ extream shape as above for non vul.

This means if the opposition happen to open (they dont normally) i will raise gibs overcall to game and bid 1NT or 3nt with a hold.

The things to remember are:

that gib cannot have more points than you so this helps in evaluating weather we can make slam, it also helps when gib is bidding against you - if gib bids game you know he must have a lot of distrabution so therefore your side has a lot of distrabution also.

Gib is a terrible bidder often insisting on his suit when it is crappy raising you to 5 or 7 when it is clear cut wrong or bidding 6NT when you bid 6 of a suit with 8 solid cards because gib is short in your suit (Gib consistantly acts as if gib is a better declearer that you) - so it is important not to treat gib like a partner you need to manipulate gib to the correct contract. if gib opens gib will not bid again over your 3nt, if you X and raise gibs response to game gib will not get carried away. if you are going to bid slam bid blackwood first then gib will not overrule you (IF you use blackwood gib will not let you play in any suit except the one that blackwood relates to - raising to 7 because gib is stupid). If Gib opens bid 2/1 so that gib will overrule you less often.

Doubling Gib can be very lucrative if gib opens and you have passed with 15+ points. Also if you pass with a big hand and then bid to game when partner opens Gib will often X you (remember gib is stupid and cannot tell his cards are workthless) so if you think your contract is sound XX frequently.

Watch out if you pass the first round then over call 1nt balancing with 15 or so... if gib X's in this situation gib has got you and there is normally nowhere to run. to pass and play quick -500 or -800 normal and not awful.

Play:

I play fast as possible - i dont think unless i am in game or slam and need to create 1 or 2 more tricks to make the contract. its total points so overtricks are worthless, partscores are worth little (better to play in a partscore than a game that goes light). It is worth bidding games and slams that might make on distrabution - going 1 or 2 or even 5 light (non vul) is not a big deal. the hand takes less than a min and then you get another shot at some points.

Warning:

The strats dont always work - they work on balance, some games i end up with an endless string of -50 & -100 scores (normally when i need a coffee). to make them work you evaluation needs to be sharp.

[jamegumb]

 jamegumb, on 2011-December-10, 14:51, said:

Those are useful, though probably not as useful as just going through this thread.

I'm still chasing Leo's record. Got 16670 just now, which is my all-time best. And I missed 2 grand slams in that one (stopping in 6 both times), and also blew two vulnerable games (misbidding one, misplaying another). Most everything else fell into place, though (as it has to if you're going to score this high).

Needed most of those points - jakisjacek scored 14410 and finished second.

18670 just now. And I know I left points on the table (chickened out on a grand or two; partner had a game on the last hand but we ran out of time - I'd stalled for about 1 minute earlier playing).

[nathan2008]

I think everyone has his own strategy. I really want to watch Leo's screen to see how fast he plays. I have tried his way but failed. (Cannot play as fast as him.) And he claimed that he could play faster than GIB. For me, the more GIB plays, the more hands i get. For the report, i think leftfoot's answers are very useful. Leo uses his unique way to win. JDonn takes GIB as his real pd lol. I have tried many ways, until now i have not found the best way to play robot reward. I always adjust my way of bidding.

To jamegumb: did u get 18670? This is the highest score i've ever seen...

[jamegumb]

 nathan2008, on 2012-June-04, 06:32, said:

I think everyone has his own strategy. I really want to watch Leo's screen to see how fast he plays. I have tried his way but failed. (Cannot play as fast as him.) And he claimed that he could play faster than GIB. For me, the more GIB plays, the more hands i get. For the report, i think leftfoot's answers are very useful. Leo uses his unique way to win. JDonn takes GIB as his real pd lol. I have tried many ways, until now i have not found the best way to play robot reward. I always adjust my way of bidding.

To jamegumb: did u get 18670? This is the highest score i've ever seen...

I did. I don't know what the record is, but I haven't heard of anyone topping 20K. (I may have been able to do that with optimal play and had I not missed a minute due to a distraction.)

I can't play faster than GIB - at least, not on game/slam contracts. GIB often takes a while on part scores. So, compared to others, I think I let the computer play a lot more hands than I do. It's the opposite of masterminding. I open 1NT in these contests rarely, and I often raise 1M to 4M since that almost always plays there (you're assisted a lot in the bidding knowing that partner's hand is not as good as yours, so searching for slam is pointless if you've got 15HCP and partner opens). And I make a lot of 4SF bids in the hope that GIB will assume the reigns in NT. Also I double opps a lot, to again make my GIB the declarer.

Fast connections help; with a good connection I can see about 50-55 hands. Bad connections mean about 40-45 hands. Assuming each hand you see is worth an average of 150 points or so, this means a fast connection is worth about 1500 points on average. That's a bunch.

[nathan2008]

As a mathematician, i always analyse my results and try to make sure that my strategy is the best mathematically. For ex, assume a player's average score is 7000 in 25 mins and can PLAY 30 hands (do NOT count in all pass hands.) So he can get 233 every hand. If he opens 1Nt with 15-17, assume he can make 40% 3nt with that opening. Then in no vul, the expectation is below 233. So he should NOT open 1nt in no vul. In vul, the expectation is 240. Just a little higher, so u still should NOT open 1nt. You can make many calculations like that. Anyway i always make a lot of calculations and analyse my results. Unfortunately, we don't have hands record. i must do this after every race. I have many interesting calculations..... Maths is in our daily life .

[RunemPard]

Just took the time to track how many hands I managed to get in after reading this...

29 hands in 25 minutes...5 round passes...my partner played 12 hands...

I guess my main goal is if I have a chance to have the robot play a good contract, I let him.

[OldPlayr]

I'm relatively new to the site & just tried a few of these.

I can see no sense to playing them... The robots make bids that make absolutely no sense at all. Do they play some sort of bidding system?

Other than practice playing all sorts of crazy bid & distribution hands, I see no value.

What do you all see in these robot tournaments? Is there some sort of guideline document someplace? Am I missing something?

[Bbradley62]

 OldPlayr, on 2012-July-26, 17:41, said:

The robots make bids that make absolutely no sense at all. Do they play some sort of bidding system?

Yes, the robots play 2/1, not SAYC. You can click on "My BBO", then "Convention Cards"; the first thing listed under "Stock Convention Cards" is "GIB 2/1" which you can view to see GIB's convention card. Of course, by playing in a GIB tournament you agreed to the conditions of contest, which include playing GIB's convention card.

[Bbradley62]

 OldPlayr, on 2012-July-26, 17:41, said:

What do you all see in these robot tournaments? Is there some sort of guideline document someplace? Am I missing something?

There are several different kinds of robot tournaments; these are thoroughly explained online on the main BBO homepage: under "Featured Areas", click on "Robot World" then "About Robot Tournaments".