[thorvald]

---

3N is balanced choice of game, 4♣ and 4♦ are cuebids, and 4N RKC

So you have to lead against 6♠.

A simulation shows that ♦ is best so you lead ♦8 and see the following:

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First trick goes 8->9->T->K

Declarer plays ♣A followed by a ♣ to the Queen. Partner follows with the ♣2 and ♣T

Declarer now plays ♠J-2-9 and you take the King.

Now a new simulation shows a chance for an uppercut if partner has ♠T, so you play back a ♣, but partner has no more trumps and declarers 2 losing ♥ go away on the ♣.

The interesting part of this board was declarers play of ♠9, as we know he must have one lower, so why play ♠9?

For a human it is obvious that there is no uppercut, but that is not clear for the bot.

I ran a simulation if declarer had played a lower ♠ and now the best continuation was a ♦.

So the clever declarer dropping the ♠9 gained 13 Imps instead of losing 13 as the other table played 4♠

---

[zhasbeen]

Thorvald,

If you like playing against robots you should try one of the ACBL Daylong games. They have most elite players of any of the ACBL games I'm aware of, and the biggest fields. The ACBL Daylong MP(1) game usually has 1250-1350 tables. The (2) and (3) games have many of the same players but the overall field is smaller as the () numbers get higher. These are 12-board matches. There is also an one 18-Board ACBL game that has 350-450 tables. Weekdays have larger fields than weekends.
To give you an idea you an idea of how strong the opponents can, Jeff Meckstroth "jjmech" started playing in the daylongs this month. There is a pretty big list of "name" players. Dan Morse of Denmark is another elite that plays in the ACBL games, but pairs only--no robots.

That said, the average section isn't that strong. Scoring average for a section is usually close to 50% as you would expect. BBO does a good job spreading the elites evenly through the fields.

[thorvald]

zhasbeen, on 2022-October-23, 13:01, said:

Thorvald,

If you like playing against robots you should try one of the ACBL Daylong games. They have most elite players of any of the ACBL games I'm aware of, and the biggest fields. The ACBL Daylong MP(1) game usually has 1250-1350 tables. The (2) and (3) games have many of the same players but the overall field is smaller as the () numbers get higher. These are 12-board matches. There is also an one 18-Board ACBL game that has 350-450 tables. Weekdays have larger fields than weekends.
To give you an idea you an idea of how strong the opponents can, Jeff Meckstroth "jjmech" started playing in the daylongs this month. There is a pretty big list of "name" players. Dan Morse of Denmark is another elite that plays in the ACBL games, but pairs only--no robots.

That said, the average section isn't that strong. Scoring average for a section is usually close to 50% as you would expect. BBO does a good job spreading the elites evenly through the fields.

I like to compete against humans, as competing against the robots makes no sense (They are to weak)

But I like to compete (and sometime win) by playing bridge, not by fooling the bots.

But I really dislike any tournaments where we all don't play the same cards, and I think most of the daylongs are with 16 boards, so you get compared to 15 other results, but the final result is something like

https://webutil.brid...b=web&v3v=6.4.2

So getting compared to other players, that played other boards isn't really interesting

I know BBO is doing this to prevent cheating, but I would like to play 16 baords and get compared to other players/pairs playing the same boards

[zhasbeen]

thorvald, on 2022-October-23, 13:39, said:

I like to compete against humans, as competing against the robots makes no sense (They are to weak)

But I like to compete (and sometime win) by playing bridge, not by fooling the bots.

But I really dislike any tournaments where we all don't play the same cards, and I think most of the daylongs are with 16 boards, so you get compared to 15 other results, but the final result is something like

https://webutil.brid...b=web&v3v=6.4.2

So getting compared to other players, that played other boards isn't really interesting

I know BBO is doing this to prevent cheating, but I would like to play 16 baords and get compared to other players/pairs playing the same boards

There are 3 Daylong ACBL matchpoint tournaments at 12-boards each and one 18-board .
While it is true that all sections don’t play the same boards, they have a way of spreading them out so that a meaningful number of players play the same hand. In other words, If you are in a 15-table section of a daylong game there at least 4 times that many playing same hands that you play.

I just checked a recent Daylong tournament (game) and clicked the “traveller” icon for each board of a 12-board ACBL Daylong. The traveller allows you to compare the boards you played with others who played them. For this game the number of players playing a particular board ranged from a low of 57 to a high of 83. Not only do players in sections other than yours play the same board you played, but some players in your section will have played different board (s) than you did. I discovered this a long time ago when I wanted to see how some name player played the hand I did. If you can consistently do well in the ACBL robot tournaments, you probably have the card playing skills and decision-making ability to do well in pairs events. It just takes finding compatible partners and learning a few systems. When I refer to "you" I mean the collective you. I realize you are an advanced player.

As an obsessive record keeper, I have found that there is direct correlation between average scores in robot tournaments and pairs games. In fact, robot scores are a little truer to form since all players in those games have same partner, same opponents, and play the same convention card. A top pro has even more the best of it under those conditions. When playing in pairs games the elites are often playing with students or clients.

If only BBO were to provide its customers with a modern robot. Apparently, GIB cannot be fixed or reprogrammed. If not for providing tournaments that allow the humans to play 75-80 percent of the hands it would be unbearable. I find that getting lots of practice playing interesting hands is one thing that keeps me going. I also like competing and seeing how some of the pros bid and play some of the hands.

[zhasbeen]

thorvald, on 2022-October-23, 13:39, said:

I like to compete against humans, as competing against the robots makes no sense (They are to weak)

But I like to compete (and sometime win) by playing bridge, not by fooling the bots.

But I really dislike any tournaments where we all don't play the same cards, and I think most of the daylongs are with 16 boards, so you get compared to 15 other results, but the final result is something like

https://webutil.brid...b=web&v3v=6.4.2

So getting compared to other players, that played other boards isn't really interesting

I know BBO is doing this to prevent cheating, but I would like to play 16 baords and get compared to other players/pairs playing the same boards

There are 3 Daylong ACBL matchpoint tournaments at 12-boards each and one 18-board .
While it is true that all sections don’t play the same boards, they have a way of spreading them out so that a meaningful number of players play the same hand. In other words, If you are in a 15-table section of a daylong game there at least 4 times that many playing same hands that you play.

I just checked a recent Daylong tournament (game) and clicked the “traveller” icon for each board of a 12-board ACBL Daylong. The traveller allows you to compare the boards you played with others who played them. For this game the number of players playing a particular board ranged from a low of 57 and high of 83. Not only do players in sections other than yours play the same you board played, but some players in your section will have played different board (s) than you did. I discovered this a long time ago when I wanted to see how some name player played the hand I did. If you can consistently do well in the ACBL robot tournaments, you probably have the card playing skills and decision-making ability to do well in pairs events. It just takes finding compatible partners and learning a few systems.

As an obsessive record keeper, I have found that there is direct correlation between average scores in robot tournaments and pairs games. In fact, robot scores are a little truer to form since all players in those games have same partner, same opponents, and play the same convention card. A top pro has even more the best of it under those conditions. When playing in pairs games the elites are often playing with students or clients.

If only BBO were to provide its customers with a modern robot. Apparently, GIB cannot be fixed or reprogrammed. If not for providing tournaments that allow the humans to play 75-80 percent of the hands it would be unbearable. I find that getting lots of practice playing interesting hands is enough to keep me going, at least for now.

[thorvald]

zhasbeen, on 2022-October-24, 12:56, said:

If only BBO were to provide its customers with a modern robot. Apparently, GIB cannot be fixed or reprogrammed. If not for providing tournaments that allow the humans to play 75-80 percent of the hands it would be unbearable. I find that getting lots of practice playing interesting hands is enough to keep me going, at least for now.

Yes, it would be nice with an updated version of GIB. You can pay for the advanced Bot, but still there is along way to go. In my opinion the free bot is so terrible that BBO should not use it all :-)

I started playing the World Bridge Challenge (https://befjegy.hu/mb/) and found the competition was interesting and better than just competing against friends in the challenge-section.

I do especially like the idea that we all have the same opponents and partner :-) And they are consistent.

Defending is unfortunately very bad with the lack of signals, but GIB seems to use some signals, and I am still trying to figure out when and how :-)

When I started my reporting of the many oddities in GIB back in August this year I hoped it could help BBO improving, but until now I haven't got any reactions, neither on the posts in this forum or on the mails I have written to the CTO of BBO.

[pilowsky]

thorvald, on 2022-October-24, 15:45, said:

... back in August this year I hoped it could help BBO improving, but until now I haven't got any reactions, ...

Climate change doesn't happen overnight. Give it another couple of hundred years.

[smerriman]

thorvald, on 2022-October-24, 15:45, said:

When I started my reporting of the many oddities in GIB back in August this year I hoped it could help BBO improving, but until now I haven't got any reactions, neither on the posts in this forum or on the mails I have written to the CTO of BBO.

I did warn you back in August via email not to hope that, because it wasn't going to happen