[stacy]

Dear Fred,

If ever I learn to play competently it'll be in large measure the result of a zillion hours on BridgeBase. I'm all sorts of grateful for the software and the service -- you totally rock.

We're spending lots of time playing against the robots, it's a great environment in which to play and skype/IM/phone with partner -- makes every single session a really valuable lesson. It's beyond tedious, however, that the robots are incapable of claiming. Is there any way to change that?

Cheers-
stacy

[TylerE]

This is something I'd like to see too, at the very least in the blatantly obvious cases (e.g. holding all high trump)

[fred]

stacy, on Jan 9 2009, 04:03 PM, said:

If ever I learn to play competently it'll be in large measure the result of a zillion hours on BridgeBase. I'm all sorts of grateful for the software and the service -- you totally rock.

Thanks Stacy - you should see me play Guitar Hero

For those of you who do not know Stacy, she rocks too! I really enjoy reading her blog - suggest you check it out:

Link to Stacy's web site

Quote

We're spending lots of time playing against the robots, it's a great environment in which to play and skype/IM/phone with partner -- makes every single session a really valuable lesson.  It's beyond tedious, however, that the robots are incapable of claiming.  Is there any way to change that?

I agree that this would be a great improvement, but realistically speaking I don't think it is something that rates to happen any time soon. Reasons:

- GIB is a very complex program
- We are not the people who wrote the original GIB program which means there is a significant learning curve involved in our figuring out how to change/improve GIB
- We have managed to figure out (mostly at least) what makes GIB tick with respect to the bidding
- We only have a vague idea of what makes GIB tick with respect to play and defense (where claims obviously come into play) and these aspects of the program are much more complex than then the aspects of the program that are responsible for GIB's bidding
- I am guessing that even if we understood all aspects of GIB completely, teaching it when to claim would not be easy
- There are so many other things we still want/need to do in order to improve GIB (not to mention all the other projects we are working on) and the number of programmer-hours we have limits what we can accomplish in a given time frame

I am guessing that we will eventually do this, but I would be surprised if it were to happen in 2009. Sorry - hope you understand.

Fred Gitelman
Bridge Base Inc.
www.bridgebase.com

[TylerE]

The GIBs at a table are run locally, right? Maybe run one more in the background in double dummy mode, and once all possible lines of play result in the same # of tricks initiate a claim? Maybe start doing this with 5 or 6 cards remaining so the computational overhead isn't too high.

[stacy]

Thanks Fred, for the quick reply & the prominent mention.

Of course I understand, I might even have guessed: things like this are never as easy as I imagine they might be. If you will add "claim, dammit!" to the "wouldn't it be nice to implement one day" pile, I'll go away, quiet and happy.

[Echognome]

Not that it will be a great solution to solve everything, but maybe a "Concede rest" button on defense might help? Of course it doesn't solve when there's an obvious claim for all but X tricks, but it might help in some situations.

[Phil]

Echognome, on Jan 9 2009, 04:53 PM, said:

Not that it will be a great solution to solve everything, but maybe a "Concede rest" button on defense might help? Of course it doesn't solve when there's an obvious claim for all but X tricks, but it might help in some situations.

Exactly. When the GIB tanks and you know the hand; allow a concession. This would be a nice feature in Robot Races too.

Surely the GIB can figure out if we make a valid claim...

[mtvesuvius]

Bridge Baron has a claim feature... Maybe something similar to that would work?

[jdonn]

TylerE, on Jan 9 2009, 04:28 PM, said:

The GIBs at a table are run locally, right? Maybe run one more in the background in double dummy mode, and once all possible lines of play result in the same # of tricks initiate a claim? Maybe start doing this with 5 or 6 cards remaining so the computational overhead isn't too high.

It might be better than nothing, but it's quite far from what is desired. Imagine there are four tricks left and Gib has AQT2 and KJ93 and the opponents have all their cards remaining in the suit. By the rule you state, Gib can't claim since playing the 2 and the 3 would lose the trick. But since it wouldn't actually cost a trick in the suit, Gib might randomly play the 9 to the T, leaving AQ2 and KJ3, and it still can't claim because the 2 and 3 are there. And then Gib might randomly play the J and Q on the next trick and still can't claim with A2 and K3 even though the opponents have just one card left! And if you wanted Gib to plan its play to allow it to claim when possible then you make it run even more sims when slow play is (to me) already a problem.

This is barely even scratching the surface, which shows why it would be such a complicated issue.

[fred]

Phil, on Jan 10 2009, 12:07 AM, said:

Echognome, on Jan 9 2009, 04:53 PM, said:

Not that it will be a great solution to solve everything, but maybe a "Concede rest" button on defense might help?  Of course it doesn't solve when there's an obvious claim for all but X tricks, but it might help in some situations.

Exactly. When the GIB tanks and you know the hand; allow a concession. This would be a nice feature in Robot Races too.

Surely the GIB can figure out if we make a valid claim...

If you are playing against rented GIBs you can already claim as many or as few tricks as you want (but only if it is your turn to play).

Getting it to work in our robot tournaments would be complicated. I won't go into the details as to why but the difference is that these GIBs run on our servers whereas the rented GIBs run on your hard disk.

Getting GIB to claim would be significantly more complicated.

Fred Gitelman
Bridge Base Inc.
www.bridgebase.com