[thepossum]

Dear all

I dont expect everyone to be as rigorous as in a bridge club but is there really a system where you can open 1NT with balanced 6 points and if people are playing Gib partner and ops they should bid the same system. Otherwise that goes against the whole principle of bridge and is unfair on other players and destroys the scores

People just seem to bid what they like which basically totally misleads the Bot and gives an unfair advantage to those players

Rant over.

P

[hrothgar]

Few comments here:

Ultimately, bridge is governed by a set of laws and a scoring table.

1. The laws of bridge allows psyches.
Robot's are stateless and can not field psyches.
Therefore, nothing in the laws of bridge forbid one to misrepresent your hand to some robots

2. If lying to a robot ends up improving one's score , it can hardly be unethical to attempt to win a tournament by using legal methods.
You might not find this aesthetically pleasing, but, at the end of that that's more a problem for you than the folks tricking the bots.

3. To some extent, this type of high variance strategy is encouraged by the extremely short BBO tournaments.
If you want to place in the money as often as possible (and don't mind some really bad results) then your best choice is to play high variance strategy.
(Indeed, it can be proven that in a short tournaments, its better to play a high variance strategy even if it lowers your expected value)

4. If this sort of thing really bothers you, stop playing with the bots and start playing long matches against good players.

[thepossum]

I disagree Hrothgar

It is against the spirit of all bridge. The occasional psych against humans against humans is fine but psychs against robots is tantamount to cheating if done intentionally

However, what is worse is people doing it systematically and playing their own system against the 2/1 bot

If they want to play a different system they should find a bot that understands their system

Also, we are playing for tournaments here so I think the majority of players who play correctly to the spirit of the game should not be disadvantaged by this behaviour

And of course I would like to play more against and with humans on this site but from my experience so far every time I have started a table it has been ruined fairly quickly by one or more obnoxious players. There is a serious attitude problem on this site and it needs to be cleaned up

[hrothgar]

 thepossum, on 2019-February-11, 18:40, said:

I disagree Hrothgar

It is against the spirit of all bridge. The occasional psych against humans against humans is fine but psychs against robots is tantamount to cheating if done intentionally

That is certainly one opinion.
However, it is not one shared by all and is most certainly not shared by - say - the ACBL when they run their (very) large tournaments in conjunction with the ACBL Nationals.

Once again, I suggest that you learn to differentiate between your own aesthetic preferences and the actuals laws and regulations that govern the game.
You have no right to expect that other people conform to your own idiosyncrasies.

[helene_t]

If you want a more meaningful field to compare to, you would have to play more serious tournaments. For example online tournaments with an entry fee, or real life bridge.

Alternatively, just don't worry too much about the IMP score. Compare yourself to the par, or to other tables that appear to have played real bridge. Or play in private clubs.

If you want to quantify your progress you could also focus on long-term averages. If you play in the main room, you could play EW half of the time to make sure that other NS pairs playing nonsense bridge will work against you half the time and in your favour half the time.

There's no way BBO can police nonsense in the main room. Some of the apparent nonsense could be misclicks, genuine psyches, novice mistakes, or pair experimenting with methods that turn out to be unplayable. So they shouldn't be punished for it.

But if you have the patience, you could calculate a trimmed mean and your own butler score.

Or you could play matchpoints, that is more robust against outliers.

[steve2005]

 helene_t, on 2019-February-11, 20:06, said:

Or you could play matchpoints, that is more robust against outliers.

No, people psyche effectively at mp. The only limitation is at mp its a maximum of 100% while imps could be a game or slam swing worth more than a full board at mp.


Psyching against robots is not without danger, However best hand tournaments are favoured and at best hand the risk of psyching is much lower. Getting rid of best hands simplest way to reduce effectiveness of psyches.

[hrothgar]

 steve2005, on 2019-February-11, 23:16, said:

Psyching against robots is not without danger, However best hand tournaments are favoured and at best hand the risk of psyching is much lower. Getting rid of best hands simplest way to reduce effectiveness of psyches.

Most of the classic examples of psyches involve third seat openings with weak hands or 1NT overcalls opposite a passed partner.
I suspect that eliminating "best hand" tournaments would significantly increase the number of psyches.

FWIW, a lot of the tactics that work well against the robots bear little or no resemblance to classic psyches.
For example, many people will prefer to open a three card minor as opposed to a 5 card major...

[barmar]

All the robot tournaments are "best hand", so the human will never have only 6 HCP. The human always has at least 10, and usually more.

[gordontd]

 barmar, on 2019-February-12, 09:23, said:

All the robot tournaments are "best hand", so the human will never have only 6 HCP. The human always has at least 10, and usually more.

Stop introducing FACTS into the discussion!

[steve2005]

 barmar, on 2019-February-12, 09:23, said:

All the robot tournaments are "best hand", so the human will never have only 6 HCP. The human always has at least 10, and usually more.

At least here psyche is dangerous Gib partner can do something stupid assuming you have values

[thepossum]

 hrothgar, on 2019-February-11, 18:49, said:

That is certainly one opinion.
However, it is not one shared by all and is most certainly not shared by - say - the ACBL when they run their (very) large tournaments in conjunction with the ACBL Nationals.

Once again, I suggest that you learn to differentiate between your own aesthetic preferences and the actuals laws and regulations that govern the game.
You have no right to expect that other people conform to your own idiosyncrasies.

Fair play and playing by the rules of a game are not idiosyncracies. I would much rather be called idiosyncratic than a cheat. I am starting to observe the characters who do it regualrly with these "psychs" with weak hands (usually second bid after a pass). They have been on the site for very many years, call themselves beginners (ha ha) and basically know how to game Gib and enjoy doing it to screw up IMP scores for everyone else and/otr give them huge IMP scores. They are either disruptive or borderline cheats. neither of whom are pleasant characters to have to play or have in a club and compete against. Why is nothing every done about this place. Maybe they are mates of those in charge

I am disappointed in your standards Hrothgar. I expected better from you

[thepossum]

Typical of some the usual suspects above to jump in and attack me and defend cheating or disreuption.

I should have expected nothing else really

And I must say its borderline ignorance or stupidity to think you cant mislead GiB in a Best Hand comp

And I would very much doubt that all the people doing it do it out of ignorance of bridge and conventions either.

GiB has a convention card which the honest players attempt to play to

And if we are going to start quoting rules maybe we should addreess all the rules regarding psychs, stickers, convention cards, frequency of use, frivolous use, unsporstmanlike use etc

Those defending their use need to be very careful I think

It is certainly not stated that the tournaments on Bridge Base allow psych bidding

There is also an obvious issue with psychs and the difference between robots and humans and also in duplicate bridge when they can be used to give a massive an unfair advantage to the small minority using them

From my reading of the ACBL and the WBF there is very good case that an experienced player using them after much experience with GiB (knowing how to game GiB) essentially has a partnership understanding and it is therefore a conventional use outside the convention card. In a human tournament this would have to be alerted. I would argue it is unsportsmanlike if used in this way especially since there is no mechanism to alert GiB of unusual bids

[smerriman]

If you think that bidding like this should be illegal, that's your opinion, which are you entitled to.

However, the truth is that it is not illegal on BBO, so you can't say doing so is cheating, as no rules have been broken.

BBO employees have outright stated it is allowed, and indeed even recommended it.

For example:

http://webutil.bridg...tch.php?id=1526

Josh recommends open 1NT with all balanced 14 counts. Of course illegal in live bridge (when you have a 15-17 agreement), but legal with GIB, who will never doubt that you have 15.

And a specific discussion on why psychs are perfectly legal with GIB:

http://webutil.bridg...tch.php?id=4812

[hrothgar]

 thepossum, on 2019-February-13, 00:49, said:

Typical of some the usual suspects above to jump in and attack me and defend cheating or disreuption.

Possum

Look at smerriman's post in which a BBO employee acting in an official capacity recommends the techniques that you are decrying.
Hopefully this will help you recognize a couple things

1. There is a difference between your own personal preferences and the actual laws of the game
2. People who disagree with you might not be launching personal attacks but rather pointing at areas where you are mistaken

Next time that you find yourself in a discussion like

"I believe foo"
"Well, actually the rules of the game say bar"

you might do well to follow Cromwell's old advice to the Scots...

Quote

I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible that you may be mistaken.

[helene_t]

 thepossum, on 2019-February-13, 00:49, said:

And I would very much doubt that all the people doing it do it out of ignorance of bridge and conventions either.

Oh yes, absolutely. There will be some who do it just because they can. For no particular reason, like when I kill time by sorting sand grains on the beach.

And there will be a few who deliberately mess up the IMP score for others, just like the kids that vandalize seats in the trains for fun.

It's just that it would take a lot of effort to reliable figure who did it for which reason so we don't punish the innocent.

And what would be the point? It's not a big problem. I gave you a long list of suggestions for how to deal with it.

If the point of your post is just to vent your annoyance, not to suggest that anything is done about it, then fine. Nothing wrong with that either. People complain about the weather also. And politics

If your point is to encourage people not to play nonsense bridge in a duplicate field, then I would agree. People who want to play nonsense bridge could play solitaire or set up a teaching or bidding table. As for whether extreme psyches count as nonsense bridge in that context, I think you and Hrothgar just have to agree to disagree. I have no dog in that fight.

[barmar]

 helene_t, on 2019-February-13, 16:14, said:

If your point is to encourage people not to play nonsense bridge in a duplicate field, then I would agree. People who want to play nonsense bridge could play solitaire or set up a teaching or bidding table. As for whether extreme psyches count as nonsense bridge in that context, I think you and Hrothgar just have to agree to disagree. I have no dog in that fight.

It seems like you're conflating two things.

There are people who do things like randomly bid 7NT, just to mess things up. It's not uncommon in the MBC, and maybe individual tourneys, if partner has annoyed you.

There are also people who have learned strategies for winning robot tourneys, and these often involve very aggressive bidding, like frequently opening 1NT with 12-13 HCP. Because of the Best Hand format, partner will not be too strong so they're not going to go overboard in the bidding. And when the opponents end up defending, they can be counted on to misdefend because they trust your bidding (there's actually some code in GIB to allow for psyches, but it doesn't always help much).

I believe the OP is talking about the latter, strategic psyching, not the random bizarre bids.