[uday]

Sometime August 31, we're going to tweak three more of our Robot games so that the human dummy will have to play the hand.

The affected tournaments are:

Robot Duplicate ( imps and matchpoints)
Robot Rebate 55%


We believe that this will make the human's skill more meaningful in terms of the outcome, while simultaneously making these games more enjoyable.

The free robot duplicates have been running this way for a while, and the feedback from our surveys was overwhelmingly in favour of this tweak - so here it is.

uday

[Phil]

[MickyB]

Probably the wrong place for a bug report, but when I am switched seats I find I can't click on the top-right card without opening an advert. That's on the windows client using pictures of cards, it's fine if I switch to symbols.

[beowulf]

uday, on 2012-August-27, 09:59, said:

We believe that this will make the human's skill more meaningful in terms of the outcome, while simultaneously making these games more enjoyable.

Given the skill that my robot partners usually display when handling the dummy, I am very much in favor of this change!

[hrothgar]

[diana_eva]

MickyB, on 2012-August-27, 10:43, said:

Probably the wrong place for a bug report, but when I am switched seats I find I can't click on the top-right card without opening an advert. That's on the windows client using pictures of cards, it's fine if I switch to symbols.

Thank you for the bug report. Programmers will investigate.

Quick fix: click the big-deal/small-deal button at the bottom of the window. It's the green button next to the one that toggles pictures-of-cards/hand-diagram.

Or use web version

[Zeut]

That's great news. What about the Money Bridge games?

uday, on 2012-August-27, 09:59, said:

Sometime August 31, we're going to tweak three more of our Robot games so that the human dummy will have to play the hand.

The affected tournaments are:

Robot Duplicate ( imps and matchpoints)
Robot Rebate 55%


We believe that this will make the human's skill more meaningful in terms of the outcome, while simultaneously making these games more enjoyable.

The free robot duplicates have been running this way for a while, and the feedback from our surveys was overwhelmingly in favour of this tweak - so here it is.

uday

[Andy_L]

$0.25 MP Robot Duplicate Games require finishing 8 boards/hands within 25 minutes to qualify for BBO MPs. With the existing method (South plays hands where South is declarer... and GIB partner plays hands where North is declarer) BBO has access to the historical statistical averages for how many boards/hands are played by South and how many boards/hands are played by North.

Since its "best hand for South" I'll guess for 68% N-S are declarers... and 32% E-W are declarers.
Of the 68% where N-S are declarers I'll guess two-thirds are played by South and one-third are played by North.

Using above guesses and with change where South now declares for South and North hands... South will be playing approximately 1.5x as many hands as in the past.

Finally... my Question: Will the time limit be increased (ex. from 25 minutes to 30 minutes) to account for South additional Declarer play?

[nathan2008]

how about ACBL robot games?

[Chick]

Now if we could only do the same thing with bidding and defense!

[gabivh]

Great

[gabivh]

Andy_L, on 2012-August-27, 18:23, said:

$0.25 MP Robot Duplicate Games require finishing 8 boards/hands within 25 minutes to qualify for BBO MPs. With the existing method (South plays hands where South is declarer... and GIB partner plays hands where North is declarer) BBO has access to the historical statistical averages for how many boards/hands are played by South and how many boards/hands are played by North.

Since its "best hand for South" I'll guess for 68% N-S are declarers... and 32% E-W are declarers.
Of the 68% where N-S are declarers I'll guess two-thirds are played by South and one-third are played by North.

Using above guesses and with change where South now declares for South and North hands... South will be playing approximately 1.5x as many hands as in the past.

Finally... my Question: Will the time limit be increased (ex. from 25 minutes to 30 minutes) to account for South additional Declarer play?

It should be done easily with 25 minutes.

[alwaysfin]

Lonnng overdue.

[uday]

ACBL Games - have to make sure it is OK w/the ACBL, working on it.

Money Bridge games - yes, on the list, and we'll soon change that too.

Extra time? I don't think it is needed. If we're wrong, tho, we'll readdress

Found the bug with adverts showing up for windows clients, fix will be deployed tonight

Statistics on what the impact of this might be? Looking at some days of "best hand" race-style tourneys ( too lazy to look up robot dup hands ATM), I see that in Best-Hand-1$, at any rate, over about 300K boards, the declarer is: (ignoring passouts)

South: 51%
North: 29%
East: 10%
West: 9%

[cherdano]

+1

[msd197]

great idea, thanks

[queen of h]

I think that is a great idea .. just love it! Same question as above .. will this be added to the ACBL robot game as well?

[macart]

Bravo to being declarer when playing with Robots!

[movingon]

Good! I would think ACBL would approve the change as well. I played an ACBL robot tourney today in which the robot slaughtered two hands. Thus two results were definitely not a result of my skills but poor luck.

[fuburules3]

I think it might improve the game in that there will be less incentive to bid in such a way that you become declarer (e.g. opening almost everything NT). There still is the incentive that the robot misdefends when you lie about your hand in the bidding I guess.