[tonytcao]

When you play robot tournamnet, with best hand for human, you have a powerful piece of information that you won't have in real human playing bridge games - no other hands have more HCP than yours.

How about randomly assign best hand or 2nd best hand for human? benefits:

1. Removed the guarantee than no other hands have more HCP than yours;

2. Shifted a few hands from declaring play to defense play.

Anyone agree?

[fdouglis]

Just came across this too terribly silent thread. I couldn't agree more! Lately I spend most of my bridge time playing robot minis. It is totally weird to go back to a real game and face typically much worse hands, and with no knowledge of the best!

So I think (1) the idea of randomly making some hands worse is useful since it gets rid of the guarantee, and (2) there should be frequent tournaments in which all hands are truly random. Sure if my partner declares I should still take over (usually). But defense is important, and so is not having special knowledge.

[barmar]

You can play in the ACBL "Classic" tournaments. They don't have the best-hand guarantee.

[Bbradley62]

But:

• not everyone is an ACBL member and/or wants to pay ACBL fees
  
• OP makes a very sensible compromise suggestion

[ArtK78]

 barmar, on 2013-December-04, 03:44, said:

You can play in the ACBL "Classic" tournaments. They don't have the best-hand guarantee.

That is not true. Even the "Classic" tournaments are best hand for humans.

The only thing "classic" about these tournaments is that the human player doesn't automatically play the hand when his robot partner is the declarer.

[42krunner]

Or you could just pay for the bots and play outside of a tourney.
Or play anonymously.
Or play a bunch of "Play 4's"

But I do agree in spirit. Something is nice about being in a tourney.