[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?)

[dsharpcctx]

I am certified as a club level director. The players are required to disclose their agreements to their opponents. They are, also, required to have two convention cards properly filled out that match their agreements. However, their bid on a hand may not necessarily match their agreements; deviations are allowed. But, I can assess a penalty if they consistently deviate from their agreements.

Law 16 has to do with the use of authorized and unauthorized information. Law 20 has to do with the explanation of calls. Law 21 has to do with misinformation. Law 74 has to do with conduct and etiquette.

It is okay to make bids different from your agreements; you are only required to disclose your agreements. It is unethical to have hidden agreements or consistently deviate from your agreements. The director has to decide when that line is crossed and assess the appropriate penalty for the transgression.

The issue here is that many of the tournaments on BBO have no directors assigned to address the issue. Secondly, the robots frequently deviate from the descriptions given. Since no one is enforcing the rules and the robots frequently do not follow their own rules, it should not be a surprise that humans are not following convention agreements when playing with robots. When BBO starts enforcing penalties against the robots for deviating from the agreements, then human players will get in line when deviating because they know that they will have to face the same penalties as well.

[pescetom]

 dsharpcctx, on 2026-January-17, 22:55, said:

The issue here is that many of the tournaments on BBO have no directors assigned to address the issue. Secondly, the robots frequently deviate from the descriptions given. Since no one is enforcing the rules and the robots frequently do not follow their own rules, it should not be a surprise that humans are not following convention agreements when playing with robots. When BBO starts enforcing penalties against the robots for deviating from the agreements, then human players will get in line when deviating because they know that they will have to face the same penalties as well.

You are half way there.
But another underlying issue is "what constitutes an agreement with a robot that is unable to agree anything"?
Amongst the candidates we have:
1. The GiB System Notes, which ostensibly define the system
2. The actual call that GiB will make in a given situation
3. The explanation that GiB will supply in a given situation.

You seem to assume that 3. defines the agreement and that 2. is often a deviation from that agreement.

I think it would be more logical (and closer to the law) to assume that 1 (in absence of a better Convention Card) defines the agreement. Hence the (existing but not so frequent) deviations by GiB should be considered such and the (chronically frequent) misexplanations during the auction should be considered such.

The third approach would be to consider that 2. defines the system de facto and that some of the current System Notes and many Explanations constitute misexplanation

Once you made that decision and convinced BBO to clean things up, then you still need to decide what to do about the inability of GiB to form and disclose modified agreements in the light of repeated deviations by a certain human partner. A corollary of this is whether it should be legitimate to repeatedly psyche with GiB as partner. And of course what to do if the human partner does not disclose knowledge about the real agreement of GiB when the explanation supplied is incorrect.

It's all a bit quixotic until robots get smarter and the WBF gets its act together on robot play.