[OldPlayr]

Here's an idea.

Playing as a single in tournaments that use the GIB conventions, one often encounters players who make very bad bids. It’s hard to understand why, as the meaning of a bid is clearly displayed.

To help players become better bidders, an interesting idea would be to assign a bidding skill score to players based upon the percentage of bids that they make that conform to the GIB conventions. This would help people to learn to use the conventions and enjoy playing more. It would also help partners by suggesting how well a player’s bid could be trusted.

A simple percentage of correct bids would work. Obviously, this would only apply to tournaments that use the GIB conventions. Player rating has been discussed here for a long time, this might be implementable for GIB bidding.

[pescetom]

OldPlayr, on 2026-January-16, 10:25, said:

Here's an idea.

Playing as a single in tournaments that use the GIB conventions, one often encounters players who make very bad bids. It’s hard to understand why, as the meaning of a bid is clearly displayed.

To help players become better bidders, an interesting idea would be to assign a bidding skill score to players based upon the percentage of bids that they make that conform to the GIB conventions. This would help people to learn to use the conventions and enjoy playing more. It would also help partners by suggesting how well a player’s bid could be trusted.

A simple percentage of correct bids would work. Obviously, this would only apply to tournaments that use the GIB conventions. Player rating has been discussed here for a long time, this might be implementable for GIB bidding.

One could dispute (not to say hundreds of posts confute) your claim that the meaning of a bid is clearly displayed
But it's an interesting idea all the same, although BBO has always been averse to any real ranking and this particular one does seem a bit perverse.
Do you think GiB would score high, especially if it considered follow ups?

[OldPlayr]

When you click on a bid in a GIB game, the meaning is clearly displayed.

I am not suggesting a ranking. Value is similar to the 'tournament completion rate' currently available. (I assume that you don't object to that...)

I have no idea what you mean by 'GIB scoring high'.

All I am sugggesting is an indication of how often a player's bid does not match the GIB convention. Helpful to the player in improving. Helpful to a partner on whether to expect reasonable bids or not.

[DallasKing]

I'm not sure there is a skill level that would indicate someone's willingness to read.

But there is a shortcut: If a player has 5 rows of conventions or more, they will just make up their own private bids, and play the hand at least two tricks short.

[pescetom]

 OldPlayr, on 2026-January-16, 16:48, said:

When you click on a bid in a GIB game, the meaning is clearly displayed.

A meaning is (usually) clearly displayed (although not for a double or some convention follow ups).
That does not mean that it is *the* meaning actually assumed by GiB, indeed it very often is not.
Just as it is often impossible or effectively useless.

One of the skills of playing with GiB is getting to know when to believe the explanation or not and what the real agreements are.

[pescetom]

 OldPlayr, on 2026-January-16, 16:48, said:

I have no idea what you mean by 'GIB scoring high'.
......

All I am sugggesting is an indication of how often a player's bid does not match the GIB convention.

I meant GiB scoring high in your rating (or not). If you intend to measure how often a player's call matches the automatic explanation (as opposed to the real GiB convention) then I suspect that GiB itself will not be a top scorer, see previous post.

But yes, it would be interesting to see.
The other problem as I mentioned initially is that you have to decide how far into the auction you want to measure, as the explanations degrade (both inevitably and not) on later rounds of bidding.

[pescetom]

 OldPlayr, on 2026-January-16, 16:48, said:

Helpful to the player in improving. Helpful to a partner on whether to expect reasonable bids or not.

So basically, the robot rating his human partner
I agree that would be useful.
But probably the simplest and most effective way would be just to evaluate MP/IMPs per board and weight that against the opponents and the field.

Which is of course exactly the kind of ranking that BBO always refused to implement, arguing it would degrade behaviour even further.

[Joe_Old]

The fatal flaw in the proposed system is that the arbiter assigning scores is itself flawed.

GIBBO is, at best, an intermediate player, and inherently incapable of consistently accurate criticism. Why would we want to institute a system that is supposedly teaching, but instead frequently offering bad advice? Worse, the system would only give an "up/down" "right/wrong" score, without feedback. A ranking system, whatever its goal, can only work if the ranker is itself expert.

The proposal might have merit if each bid in an auction had a definitive, single answer (or at least a very narrow range). However, given the realities of bidding, a player who wants to learn would do far better to work through any of the well planned bidding lessons created by well qualified teachers rather than try to learn from an eccentric bidder like GIBBO.

[OldPlayr]

pescetom, on 2026-January-17, 07:24, said:

A meaning is (usually) clearly displayed (although not for a double or some convention follow ups).
That does not mean that it is *the* meaning actually assumed by GiB, indeed it very often is not.
Just as it is often impossible or effectively useless.

One of the skills of playing with GiB is getting to know when to believe the explanation or not and what the real agreements are.

I have no problems playing with GIBS. The problem is with humans failing to adhere, or sometimes even come close. to bidding according to GIB conventions.

I'm just looking for a clue as to how much I should trust a human partner's bid in a GIB tournament. Also a way to encourage players to be better bidders. No intent of 'ranking'.

[pescetom]

OldPlayr, on 2026-January-17, 11:05, said:

I have no problems playing with GIBS. The problem is with humans failing to adhere, or sometimes even come close. to bidding according to GIB conventions.

I'm just looking for a clue as to how much I should trust a human partner's bid in a GIB tournament. Also a way to encourage players to be better bidders. No intent of 'ranking'.

I'm still not sure you got my point.
You would probably be reasonably happy with my bidding, even if we agreed to play the GiB system as defined in the GiB System Notes.
But we would both often be making bids which do not correspond to the explanations provided, just as GiB itself does.
We would both score poorly in your rating as described, even if we won the tournament.

If you find that hard to believe then look more carefully at the explanations, or read benelli's thread for a while.

[Huibertus]

I'm just curious about how the bidding on a couple of hands I played recently:

First a 6NT. It is almost cold, a major squeeze against either opponent, or a ♣/♥ squeeze against LHO played in the exact same order, with some additional changes of playing ♠ for one loser should opps duck the first round. After bidding like in this diagram the majors squeeze against LHO is needed and works. I was the only one to do so. 3 others bid a direct 6NT instead of my 4NT, which got them a ♥ lead after which RHO played the J and all 3 finessed ♥ T round 2. It worked, I belief the squeeze play is better still as why would RHO not have JT?

But the question about bidding is more on the 36 other players, none of them made 12 tricks, so were the ones bidding 6NT correct or were the ones that did not correct? How would you rate the bidding in the 4 described cases?

https://tinyurl.brid...se.com/bdft7j2z

And then the second one:

How do you rate bidding 3NT, is that A+ because of understanding how poor the opponents defend? Or maybe a C as it's got some chances if ♠ are 4/4 or is it an F as it is down automatically if opponents defend slightly competent?

https://tinyurl.brid...se.com/229338cm

I can raise many many more questions on how to rate bidding.I'll leave it at this. It is not doable, unless I am the judge. But time won't allow me to. (Well, that's a joke, but you get the point, right?)