[frank0]

During event 3, I see many comments on possibilities of changing the format in the future, so I open this poll.



Please also comment if you have further suggestion of the format that is used in event 3.
Some debatable points

1. IMP or MP
2. Best hand or not
3. Seeding of the initial round (whether it's small group RR or KO)
4. Seeding of the first KO (whether strictly follow #n vs. #17-n or we should let #1~4 to pick opponents, for example)
5. Format of consolation
6. # of boards, time restriction, and how to deal with players that drop out (in event 3 the arbitrary rule of assigning VP actually makes jeffford76 missed R16 by 0.01 VP).
7. Anything I forget to mention


Also, let me know if you have strong opinion that you prefer other people to organize this event.

[smerriman]

1. IMP 100%. As discussed in the other thread, "MP" is not MP, its BAM, and Gib doesn't even play BAM.

2. Non best hand, gives much nicer variety.

3-7 - whatever allows me to play as many hands as possible

[frank0]

smerriman, on 2016-October-16, 20:51, said:

1. IMP 100%. As discussed in the other thread, "MP" is not MP, its BAM, and Gib doesn't even play BAM.

2. Non best hand, gives much nicer variety.

3-7 - whatever allows me to play as many hands as possible

There is a reason I bring this best/non best hand issue into discussion

Previously (before event 2) people prefer non-best hand because the existence of special strategy for best hand (like open 1N with wide range). However I realize there are also a lot of weird things you can do in non best-hand tournament (like preempt wide, robot seems to do poorly against it). Best hand might be an option if people want to reduce the variance create by robot.

[nige1]

If frank0 uses the full-editor, he can change the MP option to BAM. Also might add some format options e.g.

• Groups then knockout.
• Simple K/O
• Simple round-robin.
• Simple Swiss.

I would prefer Swiss Pairs with long matches (or failing that a round-robin of shorter matches). Best hand. BAM scoring.

[frank0]

nige1, on 2016-October-16, 21:52, said:

If frank0 uses the full-editor, he can change the MP option to BAM. Also might add some format options e.g.

• Groups then knockout.
• Simple K/O
• Simple round-robin.
• Simple Swiss.

I would prefer Swiss Pairs with long matches (or failing that a round-robin of shorter matches). Best hand. BAM scoring.

Edited the post.

[gqc6]

IMO:
IMP non-best-hand seems good.
Probably seeding KO
For consolation, I think let group knockouts play a KO of format (winner vs winner, loser versus loser) to determine 17-32 placement, R16 losers play a KO to determine 9-16 placement etc, this way everyone plays the same boards and dropouts are easy to handle.

[gordontd]

What is meant by Swiss Round Robin as opposed to Round Robin?

Another idea I had that I mentioned a long time ago is to have a league run as round robins, with promotion & relegation between divisions between each season.

[broze]

My preference would be for best hand IMPs. I agree with Frank that it is likely to create less variance. Small changes in your play on defence (even which spot card you play from equals!) can have a bizarre effect on the robots' declarer play. I think that best hand is much more likely to decide the best player in the long run.

That said if we ever started a monthly league or whatever I would prefer regular bridge just from a purity point of view as this would be a fixed event and not really liable to change from month to month.

[cherdano]

frank0, on 2016-October-16, 20:35, said:

Also, let me know if you have strong opinion that you prefer other people to organize this event.

Thanks for organizing!
As for the format, it doesn't matter tooo much - and I think it's fine to keep rotating between different ones.

[ovncylmz]

I think we should switch between IMP best hand and non-best hand.. Best hand tactics are different and it is not real bridge, yes. But at least non-best hand is really crazy since you fool GIB very easily with weak hands.

[MrAce]

I agree with everyone about the best hand IMP.


If anyone wants to enjoy the GIB, defending with a GIB pd is not the best way to do it.

• You do not get count,
• you do not get any signal,
• you get a lot of small leads from doubleton and plan the defense wrong,
• you never get the lead of the suit you opened or overcall..
• You have to ALWAYS and I mean ALWAYS lead your stiff trump honor, especially K or the fothermucker GIB pd will ALWAYS jump its A as a second player, when the suit is played.

EDIT: I understand that, when declaring, GIB defenders not using signals and/or counts makes things difficult for human declarers and I like this. I wish they could be programmed to at least give count to human partners in defense, because declarer GIB almost always plays double dummy anyway. I can figure out pretty much the location of honors from the auction or from what I need to defeat the contract. Not knowing any count is always frustrating.

[smerriman]

For what it's worth, I'm happy with either non-best-hand or best-hand. But could only vote for one in the poll. Others may be similar.

[m1cha]

frank0, on 2016-October-16, 20:35, said:

1. IMP or MP
2. Best hand or not

2. I'm for "best hand". I feel in the last event we had too many boards where the robots were playing and the humans only discarding, these boards just increase randomness. I remember two challenges of 12 boards where I played 4 boards as declarer, one of them a full game. The other boards were played by the robots, same on both tables, resulting in matches with very low total scores.

1. I slightly prefer MP (BAM), partly as a matter of change and of curiosity. In addition I feel that MPs emphasize the playing skills (all overtricks matter) while IMPs emphasize the bidding skills (reaching game and slam matters, also competitive auctions). The latter can be a good thing in human-only competitions but here all players have the same bidding system, 3/4 of the bidding is done by robots, and penalizing sacrifice bids is just a matter of luck (see here if you don't know what I mean: http://www.bridgebas...penalty-double/). I think at MPs we get a better measure of the players' bridge skills.

[nige1]

frank0, on 2016-October-16, 22:22, said:

Edited the post.

What is a Swiss RR? As I understand it

• In a RR (Round Robin) you play a short match against every other competitor.
• In a Swiss, there are fewer, but much longer matches. On each round, you are matched against a competitor with a similar overall score, whom you haven't yet played, Thus, a Swiss is like a KO (Knockout) but with continuous repêchage (all competitors play until the end).

[Phil]

Personally I think the current format works fine.

My only question is how long have the previous three challenges lasted from start to finish?

[frank0]

Phil, on 2016-October-18, 08:08, said:

Personally I think the current format works fine.

My only question is how long have the previous three challenges lasted from start to finish?

about 1 month, I started event 3 on 9/17 and the last final score was reported on 10/16.

[frank0]

broze, on 2016-October-17, 06:52, said:

My preference would be for best hand IMPs. I agree with Frank that it is likely to create less variance. Small changes in your play on defence (even which spot card you play from equals!) can have a bizarre effect on the robots' declarer play. I think that best hand is much more likely to decide the best player in the long run.

That said if we ever started a monthly league or whatever I would prefer regular bridge just from a purity point of view as this would be a fixed event and not really liable to change from month to month.

ovncylmz, on 2016-October-17, 08:02, said:

I think we should switch between IMP best hand and non-best hand.. Best hand tactics are different and it is not real bridge, yes. But at least non-best hand is really crazy since you fool GIB very easily with weak hands.

MrAce, on 2016-October-17, 17:54, said:

I agree with everyone about the best hand IMP.


If anyone wants to enjoy the GIB, defending with a GIB pd is not the best way to do it.

• You do not get count,
• you do not get any signal,
• you get a lot of small leads from doubleton and plan the defense wrong,
• you never get the lead of the suit you opened or overcall..
• You have to ALWAYS and I mean ALWAYS lead your stiff trump honor, especially K or the fothermucker GIB pd will ALWAYS jump its A as a second player, when the suit is played.

EDIT: I understand that, when declaring, GIB defenders not using signals and/or counts makes things difficult for human declarers and I like this. I wish they could be programmed to at least give count to human partners in defense, because declarer GIB almost always plays double dummy anyway. I can figure out pretty much the location of honors from the auction or from what I need to defeat the contract. Not knowing any count is always frustrating.

m1cha, on 2016-October-17, 21:39, said:

2. I'm for "best hand". I feel in the last event we had too many boards where the robots were playing and the humans only discarding, these boards just increase randomness. I remember two challenges of 12 boards where I played 4 boards as declarer, one of them a full game. The other boards were played by the robots, same on both tables, resulting in matches with very low total scores.

1. I slightly prefer MP (BAM), partly as a matter of change and of curiosity. In addition I feel that MPs emphasize the playing skills (all overtricks matter) while IMPs emphasize the bidding skills (reaching game and slam matters, also competitive auctions). The latter can be a good thing in human-only competitions but here all players have the same bidding system, 3/4 of the bidding is done by robots, and penalizing sacrifice bids is just a matter of luck (see here if you don't know what I mean: http://www.bridgebas...penalty-double/). I think at MPs we get a better measure of the players' bridge skills.

Although I agree with all of you, I'll have to go for the format that is preferred by most people. I'll let this poll last for a few more days and see if people change their mind, and make the registration start at the end of this week.

[shyams]

I suspect that the skill level of robots in challenges is set at a lower level than robots used in paid tournaments (like the Robot Rebate 55%).

If I am right, how easy or difficult is it for BBO to set robot skill to the higher levels for our challenges?

[barmar]

shyams, on 2016-October-19, 07:12, said:

If I am right, how easy or difficult is it for BBO to set robot skill to the higher levels for our challenges?

We're working on something that will make it possible, as well as avoiding some of the delays waiting for the opponent to accept the challenge.

[MrAce]

barmar, on 2016-October-19, 08:24, said:

We're working on something that will make it possible, as well as avoiding some of the delays waiting for the opponent to accept the challenge.

That sounds great!