[pgcto]

I had this hand recently playing against 3 robots

https://tinyurl.com/y8qvtu8z

where my partner opened 5♣. Since I had 4 winners in the other 3 suits slam looked good - maybe even 7. The bidding note for the robot said 5♦ was a cue bid so I bid it.

The robot then passed!

My question is how can the robot be programmed so that it passes a cue bid?

[pescetom]

pgcto, on 2022-February-13, 15:03, said:

My question is how can the robot be programmed so that it passes a cue bid?

My guess is that some genius decided to program an advanced robot to cue bid at 5 level and then omitted to program the follow-ups.

[helene_t]

Hi pgcto, welcome to the forum

This is apparently a bug here, North sees 5♦ as to play while South sees it as a cue. Frustrating, but nothing you can do about it. Mostly GIB will interpret a cue as a cue if it is alerted by GIB as a cue.

[smerriman]

The robots don't actually bid based on the descriptions of the bids at all (they're for humans only) - I expect that description comes from some generic rule about high level bids, but no followups to 5 level bids have been programmed in.

[pescetom]

smerriman, on 2022-February-13, 16:32, said:

The robots don't actually bid based on the descriptions of the bids at all (they're for humans only) - I expect that description comes from some generic rule about high level bids, but no followups to 5 level bids have been programmed in.

Shows great respect for paying customers.

[steve2005]

smerriman, on 2022-February-13, 16:32, said:

but no followups to 5 level bids have been programmed in.

and the robot passes when bids are undefined

[helene_t]

On this hand I don't think the cuebid gives a more illuminating auction so you might as well just bit 6♣. You know that partner can't cuebid and will bid 6♣ anyway. 5♦ also risks a lead-directing double.

More generally, it is sometimes a winning strategy just to make a neanderthal leap to the most promissing contract rather than trying to have an intelligent auction. With human partners you normally shouldn't do this since most human partners like to be involved in the auction also instead of having partner mastermind everything, but robots don't have such emotions.

[pgcto]

helene_t, on 2022-February-14, 06:26, said:

On this hand I don't think the cuebid gives a more illuminating auction so you might as well just bit 6♣. You know that partner can't cuebid and will bid 6♣ anyway. 5♦ also risks a lead-directing double.

More generally, it is sometimes a winning strategy just to make a neanderthal leap to the most promissing contract rather than trying to have an intelligent auction. With human partners you normally shouldn't do this since most human partners like to be involved in the auction also instead of having partner mastermind everything, but robots don't have such emotions.

I agree, in retrospect, that I wasn't going to get any additional information from the response to the cue bid but it would be nice if the GIB bid matched the description.