[Thranduil]

https://tinyurl.com/29m7kcoe

In the current forum Sunday daylong, the robot just passed a forcing bid - we were in a game force due to my jump rebid of 2♠, and the 4♣ bid also says it's forcing in its description.

[smerriman]

Sunday daylong is free bots, so to be expected. There is not a single piece of GIB's logic for bidding that looks at the word 'forcing' in the description, it's solely about how general rules for the next round are defined, and the crucial part of advanced GIB's logic is what handles this one.

[Thranduil]

Even a free bot should not pass in a clear game forcing sequence, regardless of what bid descriptions actually say.

[pescetom]

Thranduil, on 2024-December-22, 16:28, said:

Even a free bot should not pass in a clear game forcing sequence, regardless of what bid descriptions actually say.

Or to reverse that, descriptions should mean what they say.

[smerriman]

Thranduil, on 2024-December-22, 16:28, said:

Even a free bot should not pass in a clear game forcing sequence, regardless of what bid descriptions actually say.

The free bot was never designed to be used standalone, it was BBO's decision to disable a large portion of the code that makes the robot actually bid properly. There are countless times it will make a clearly incorrect bid or pass forcing bids, not because of a bug, but because it was specifically programmed to leave those decisions to the other part of the code.

Of course, whether BBO should be offering a half-working bot is a valid question, but in most cases issues like this aren't "fixed" by making a change to the bidding rules.