[Joeydinky]

Hi all, So sorry about my mistake earlier. I am not comfortable with computers and this is the first time I have used the forum. Unfortunately, I sometimes mis-read the bidding (more often than I'd like to admit). So forget the first hand I discussed earlier. That was my fault.

However, about the 2nd hand, I have been taught that in strong game forcing auctions 3 level bids are stronger than 4L. Gives you more space for Q-bids and slam exploration which GIB is very weak at.

I don't know the specific hand but earlier today we had a strongish auction an arrrived at 4H. GIB actually Q-bid 5Cs and I signed off in 5Hs knowing we were off 2 losing spades since Gib didn't Q-bid 4Ss. He bid 6Hs anyway and we were down. I hate it when Gib doesn't respect the human partner which often he does in a NT auction when he pulls a making 3NT to 4H/S to go down. Gib seems to be nervous about having a stiff when I have showed stoppers in that suit.

Here's another NT auction I didn't understand from the other day. I opened 1NT (15-16 pts.) with a 5 card major which I always do even in live bridge. 1NT - 2C(single suit) - P - 2D (asking), now 2Hs (KJ10xx)by me, P - 2S when GIB had my Qx of Hs and only the 8xx of spades. We played in our 3-2 spade fit down. Don't understand bidding a 3 card suit at all with minimum pts.

Another bug I have with GIB is splintering in stiff As or Ks. All experts say that is wrong. We missed a slam because I thought we had a losing C. OH no, Gib had the stiff A.

One problem I really have with Gib is his lack of respect for the human often pulling bids that make to bids that go down. OH WELL. Thanks all.

[mike777]

just for the heck of it think about if Gib makes the vast number of its bid correctly. Even the ones you say are cleary wrong are not clearly wrong.

[Bbradley62]

Joeydinky, on 2012-April-09, 18:40, said:

I don't know the specific hand but earlier today we had a strongish auction an arrrived at 4H. GIB actually Q-bid 5Cs and I signed off in 5Hs knowing we were off 2 losing spades since Gib didn't Q-bid 4Ss. He bid 6Hs anyway and we were down.

---

When you play with GIB, until you get more used to his system, you should "preview" the explanations of bids you want to make by pointing your cursor at them before you actually select them. In this case, you would have seen that in this cue-bidding sequence, GIB thinks your 5♥ bid denies first or second round control of diamonds, which makes it almost certain that you will have one of the top two spade honors. Note that the explanation of 5♣ denies the ♠A but not the ♠K.

[barmar]

Bbradley62, on 2012-April-09, 20:15, said:

[In this case, you would have seen that in this cue-bidding sequence, GIB thinks your 5♥ bid denies first or second round control of diamonds, which makes it almost certain that you will have one of the top two spade honors. Note that the explanation of 5♣ denies the ♠A but not the ♠K.

However, if you hover over 5♦, you'll see that it shows first-round control, so there's apparently no bid that shows second-round control. If you bid 5♦, GIB will sign off in 5♥, although I don't see how you could know this.

The bidding rules just say "It's a cue bid". There are subroutines in the code that try to figure out what it shows and denies, based on what you and partner have previously shown and denied. I'm staring at the code now, trying to figure out how it's coming up with this inconsistency. Bypassing a suit is only supposed to deny what bidding it would have shown. But there are two different subroutines: scyes() says what it shows, scno() says what bypassing it denies; since they're two different routines, there's nothing forcing them to be consistent. I just don't see the bug yet, but I'll keep plugging away at it.

[Bbradley62]

Thanks. After 5♣-5♦, 5♥ must mean "I can't go to 6 myself because I'm still worried about something", and South might expect that the problem is spades and pass 5♥.

[Joeydinky]

Hi again,

Believe me I am trying to understand GIB but some of his programming is opposite from my experience in live bridge. I understand what you are saying. But I think that bidding 5D showing a diamond control says that I have no fear of Ss. I am cooperating with his slam effort. Fast arrival should say I have two losers and want to play only 5Hs.

[pigpenz]

I sort of come from the old school of texas and jacoby, where jacoby followed by jump shows mild slam interest, and texas denies any interest in slame.

but 5♦ would be correct call or 5♥ i would assume would pinpoint the same problem spades.

[barmar]

I did find a couple of bugs in the cue-bidding code. When he inverted the logic in scyes() (what a cue bid shows) to produce scno() (what bypassing a suit denies), he didn't get it quite right in a couple of cases, including the case where you just rebid the agreed trump suit.

Things might be easier if it used Italian-style cue bidding (show first- or second-round controls, rather than aces always before kings), but I'm not sure I want to make that drastic a change. But this is why we have to cooperate in the slam exploration even if we have no help in ♠ -- partner might have the K, but couldn't show it because he has to cue aces first.

There's not a whole lot of explicit logic to this. It's really hard to express slam exploration in explicit rules, especially with the kinds of information we can express about what a bid shows. So we depend heavily on simulations at this point in the auction. Cue bids or Blackwood provide helpful data to the simulations.