However, GIB is far from perfect. When GIB does make an error, it tends to be a dramatic error of the type that humans would rarely make. Why does this happen? There are quite a lot of reasons. GIB may be programmed incorrectly for the auction. GIB may have misunderstood what someone else meant by their bid, and reached a faulty conclusion. Sometimes when GIB doesn't know what to do, it examines a bunch of simulated hands to reach a decision, and although those simulations tend to be quite accurate, they can from time to time reach a silly conclusion for a variety of reasons.
It is important to BBO that GIB plays as well as reasonably possible. After all, many customers pay money to rent GIB, and they deserve a good product. What does BBO do to improve GIB? The answer is, a lot, and you can help! BBO appreciates the help of its players to find problems with GIB so they can be fixed. If you find any problem with GIB, there are several ways to report it. By reporting a hand in any of these ways, it will always be seen and considered.
- If the hand was in a robot tournament, you can send an automated report. After playing the hand, go to My Results toward the right of the screen. Highlight the hand on the list of hands. Toward the bottom, click on Options, mouse over Export Deal, and go to Send Robot Report. You have the opportunity to type a brief message stating what you believe went wrong, then slick Send.
- You can post to the BBO forums, in this sub-forum which is specifically designated for reporting problems with GIB: http://www.bridgebas...bot-discussion/
- You can email support@bridgebase.com with the tourney number and board number, or a link to the hand and a brief description of the problem.
- You can send a private message on BBO, either to jdonn, uday, or georgi.
In order to be most helpful, and help facilitate BBO's improvement of GIB, please consider the following Dos and Don'ts. Please note, these are meant as a general guide to help us all, not hard and fast rules.
- DO report bugs you find at your table, even if they were by your opponent GIB instead of your partner.
- DON'T be rude in your message when you report the bug. We are trying to help you!
- DO report bugs in either the bidding or the play. It's easier for us to work on the bidding, but we work on improving the play as well.
- DON'T report a bid that you think isn't best if it's not really a bug, assuming GIB did make the proper system bid, or a very reasonable choice. For example, If GIB holds AT3 K2 8754 K763 and the auction goes 1♥ (2♦) to him, none of P, 2♥, X, or 2NT are really "bugs" that we are likely to be inclined to fix. Or if GIB bid Stayman with a balanced hand including four small of its major and AQ doubleton on the side, we probably won't change it even if you think just raising to 3NT was a better idea. You can always check with us if you aren't sure, but ultimately we try to go with what seems to us the best mix of "good bridge", and what most GIB users want (many of whom are not expert bridge players, and might be confused that GIB passed with 10 points or failed to bid Stayman).
- DO analyze the hand correctly! Maybe that 4NT bid was supposed to be Keycard Blackwood for hearts after all. Or maybe GIB dropped that K from Kx under the ace because it could be endplayed if it didn't, so it hoped partner had QJx.
- DON'T report a bug just because GIB doesn't play your favorite convention. You can make suggestions if you like, but we have much more important things to work on than Exclusion Keycard Blackwood (such as improving how GIB uses regular Blackwood).
- DO read the explanations of the bids! A common example is something like 1NT (2♣) P (2♦), P (2♥) 2♠, where 2♣ showed a single-suited hand, 2♦ asked which suit, and 2♥ confirmed hearts. Partner's 2♠ bid is generally a 4 card suit, since if GIB had a 5 card suit it would have transferred directly over 2♣. The explanation explains that 2♠ would likely be a 4 card suit. It can't be stressed enough, please read the explanations of the bids, and you will save yourself a lot of trouble!
Thanks again to all BBO users who use GIB, and who report its problems to us so we can fix them. Your contributions are valuable and appreciated. We will continue to work on improving GIB, as well as implementing some new features and ideas down the road if and when they are possible.
Edit: Here's a help file with screenshots showing various ways to report GIB bugs.
This post has been edited by diana_eva: 2015-May-14, 13:08
Reason for edit: Added link to help file
pes_6 'Please fix this. Robot goes down in easy makeable grand slam contract. I really don't know why it played on this way.'
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GIB makes such errors with increasing frequency
The likely explanation is that the BBO programmer took time off from his onerous revenue-creation schedule, to tackle an old Gib bug
Unfortunately, bizarre behaviour like this was an unforeseen side-effect of his fix
The obvious solution is for BBO owners to allow their programmer a few extra minutes for regression-testing