[pilowsky]

Vampyr, on 2020-October-25, 16:27, said:

But this forum is "interesting bridge hands". For most people examples of how to game the robots does not count as "interesting". It would definitely be good to have a separate forum for how to play with robots. There was a thread about this recently; perhaps this is the place for these posts.

Most people I know do not play with robots. I do sometimes when it is free, but I'm not really interested in how to game the robots. I don't know if many people are, but I kind of doubt it. I think that for most people, playing with robots is a way to keep their fingers busy while they are watching television.

Some people regard 'robot Bridge' as the purest form. Taydog - Martin Henneberger is one of them. I'm fairly sure that he doesn't play with his eyes shut.

In a sense, all games are the same. Even humour is a 'game', when Sacha Cohen sets out to make Rudy look like the idiot that he is, you can bet that a lot of careful thought goes into it.
You can be sure that he gets a lot of satisfaction from the outcome. I also take comedy very seriously. I take everything seriously.

Many of the things that I find out playing against robots have direct applicability to FTF Bridge, some do not. Some of the things I learned playing Chess have proved invaluable in playing Bridge.

All Bridge hands are 'interesting'. How is that the 'wrong bid' gets the top score. I don't care at all if you ignore the problem, but simply saying oh it happens is not really an answer.
That response is dooming you to mediocrity. It simply means that every time you play there will always be someone better and you will never no why and you will never care because you are doing the 'right thing' even though it doesn't get the best result.

How does that make any sense? How is that logical?

When you say 'most people' you are paraphrasing Richard Nixon's "Silent Majority" this concept is completely discredited. the silent majority does not exist. Like the American dream, it is as my mother used to say 'a pigment of your imagination'.

Most people I know really enjoy playing with robots. They are never rude, they never complain, they never get tired and they always look after you. (that's paraphrasing the mother from the Terminator).

Anyway, since my posts are a source of irritation, I'll stop.

[Vampyr]

pilowsky, on 2020-October-25, 18:35, said:

All Bridge hands are 'interesting'. How is that the 'wrong bid' gets the top score. I don't care at all if you ignore the problem, but simply saying oh it happens is not really an answer.
That response is dooming you to mediocrity. It simply means that every time you play there will always be someone better and you will never no why and you will never care because you are doing the 'right thing' even though it doesn't get the best result.

How does that make any sense? How is that logical?

I have no idea what you are trying to say. Bridge is a game of probabilities, and if you make percentage bids and plays you will get good results. Yes, we have all made lead-inhibiting bids in our lives. Yours is not the hand for it, but whatever. It could have gone very badly for you, but you lucked out, and crowing about it invites ridicule. And it highlights the fact that robot “bridge” is a poor approximation of actual bridge.

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When you say 'most people' you are paraphrasing Richard Nixon's "Silent Majority" this concept is completely discredited. the silent majority does not exist. Like the American dream, it is as my mother used to say 'a pigment of your imagination'.

So what colour is the silent majority then?

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Most people I know really enjoy playing with robots. They are never rude, they never complain, they never get tired and they always look after you. (that's paraphrasing the mother from the Terminator).

I guess you and I know different people. The EBU have eliminated robot substitutes from many of their games because many of their players do not like playing with/against boots. In our local virtual club, we have a host to make sure that a single player gets a game, and robots are only used to fill up a half table, so that nobody is saddled with playing opposite a robot for the whole session.

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Anyway, since my posts are a source of irritation, I'll stop.

Well, your posts in this thread are certainly annoying.

[JonnyQuest]

pilowsky, on 2020-October-25, 18:35, said:

How is that the 'wrong bid' gets the top score.

The wrong bid did not get the "top score," the result did. You seem to be confusing the two.

The scoring for your bid is shown above in the poll results.

If only there were a common bridge term for this, this . . . judging the merits of a bid by the results I would use it here. (Sarcasm font in red)

[Vampyr]

JonnyQuest, on 2020-October-26, 06:38, said:

The wrong bid did not get the "top score," the result did. You seem to be confusing the two.

The scoring for your bid is shown above in the poll results.

If only there were a common bridge term for this, this . . . judging the merits of a bid by the results I would use it here.

It’s called “resulting”.

[AL78]

pilowsky, on 2020-October-25, 18:35, said:

How is that the 'wrong bid' gets the top score.

Because bridge is a game of probabilities, not a game of perfect justice. If there was no random variation, the same players would always be winning. A "wrong bid" at MPs is a bid that will result in an inferior score the majority of the time assessed over a large number of possible layouts of the cards. If the wrong bid is bad 75% of the time, it will be neutral or work out better 25% of the time, that 25% corresponding to unlikely layouts of the cards. Having a low probability of success does not mean no chance of success, but because an inferior action worked on one specific layout does not mean it wasn't an inferior action when looking at the overall picture. It is the same in life, doing stupid things doesn't 100% guarentee you will suffer for it, but if you repeatedly do stupid things, you are more likely to come a cropper than if you don't do stupid things, hence why it is best for you and those around you in the long term to avoid being careless and reckless.

[pilowsky]

I really do understand what you are getting at. In fact my preference - hold your breath - would be for a scoring system that actually rewarded good bridge.
This is not what we have at the moment.

In this way, I think I am very much in support of Mikeh's perspective on Bridge. Mike says that he doesn't look at the traveller. I take this to mean that he sees the purity in each individual hand.
That each hand should be bid and then played so that it reaches its optimal conclusion.

I'm not sure how best to describe this philosophy, possibly it is how lawyers see the world. A space of equipoise where each side negotiates for a perfectly fair contract to the best of their abilities.

There is a considerable charm in this approach. It is the 'British way'. It is redolent of old wine and quiet days on the common with the slap of willow on the red leather ball until dusk.
I really like it. When I fail to make a contract or miss some tricks I should have made, those are the hands I savour and work over later. Collecting masterpoints doesn't thrill me at all.

Tragically the scoring system that Mr Vanderbilt and his buddies bequeathed us has none of the artfulness to reward all of the intricacies that the game provides.

Bid your way to exactly the 'right' contract played on exactly the 'right' side and you get no reward at all.

Play matchpoints and the IMP's people say you're a fool, play IMP's and the matchpoints people say that you can't make overtricks.

Pause to think for even a second, and West bellows for the Director.
We're a bit off-piste for this part of the Forum so I'll stop here, but you get the gist.

[AL78]

pilowsky, on 2020-November-01, 23:34, said:

I really do understand what you are getting at. In fact my preference - hold your breath - would be for a scoring system that actually rewarded good bridge.

To do that, you'd need to analyse what the best possible score each side could obtain given the other side's actions and the rest of the field, and base a score comparing their actual result to the theoretical best possible result. Probably impossible to do, so we are stuck with the current system. The alternative is to take up chess where there is virtually no luck*, and if you lose, you either messed up or were outplayed by a superior opponent.

*Once I was in a rook and minor piece endgame with my rook positioned in the centre of the board. My opponent moved his king to attack my rook, hoping to drive it away. I resigned. He asked why. I said my rook has no safe square and is lost. He said he had no idea that was the case when he made the move, and said I was very unlucky.

[AL78]

pilowsky, on 2020-November-01, 23:34, said:

In this way, I think I am very much in support of Mikeh's perspective on Bridge. Mike says that he doesn't look at the traveller. I take this to mean that he sees the purity in each individual hand.
That each hand should be bid and then played so that it reaches its optimal conclusion.

I enjoy bridge much more if I don't look at the traveller/bridgemate. It just stimulates frustration which can harm my play, which results in more frustration. It doesn't help to know at the time we got the only opponents to bid the game/slam on a hook. Far better to look at the hands after the session and note why we got terrible results on some boards. Problem is, other people like to look at the traveller and voice the result, so I can't always choose to live in blissful ignorance.

[pilowsky]

AL78, on 2020-November-02, 05:30, said:

To do that, you'd need to analyse what the best possible score each side could obtain given the other side's actions and the rest of the field, and base a score comparing their actual result to the theoretical best possible result. Probably impossible to do, so we are stuck with the current system. The alternative is to take up chess where there is virtually no luck*, and if you lose, you either messed up or were outplayed by a superior opponent.

*Once I was in a rook and minor piece endgame with my rook positioned in the centre of the board. My opponent moved his king to attack my rook, hoping to drive it away. I resigned. He asked why. I said my rook has no safe square and is lost. He said he had no idea that was the case when he made the move, and said I was very unlucky.

Well, I agree with you there. chess is a much better game as far as scoring goes. It has three outcomes and a clock. Disputes are rare. It has other problems though.

[pilowsky]

AL78, on 2020-November-02, 05:36, said:

I enjoy bridge much more if I don't look at the traveller/bridgemate. It just stimulates frustration which can harm my play, which results in more frustration. It doesn't help to know at the time we got the only opponents to bid the game/slam on a hook. Far better to look at the hands after the session and note why we got terrible results on some boards. Problem is, other people like to look at the traveller and voice the result, so I can't always choose to live in blissful ignorance.

The Traveller is not the Bridgemate. The Traveller that I am talking about is the complete list of outcomes. Perhaps Mike misunderstood me because although he has posted here more than anyone else, he has never played against robots in competition as far as I am aware. At least, he has no BBO masterpoints.
That's OK, there are many things that I don't do either. On BBO the term 'Traveller' doesn't refer to the bit of paper stuck under the plastic board or the Bridgemate, or anything else.

It means the final set of results on a server that you can see when I go to the myhands database.

People like me that enjoy using BBO to play Bridge use this facility all the time to see our results and improve our game. The data is only available 24 hours later when the hands have been played 16 times.

Strangely imo, although this Forum is called BBO, most of the stalwarts that populate it don't seem to like the platform much. I find that odd.