[00__0906]

Lately (a few months) it seems like 4-1 or worse trumps distribution became the norm.

Many other similar examples suggest that:
a/ hands are far from being random
b/ Robots have visibility to all hands and play accordingly (cheating?!?)
c/ Cards position is changed during the hand (clearly happens in "Practice - Bridge Master")

While I do not mind challenging situations, when it becomes the norm (repeatedly and consistently) not only is very frustrating but alters your play.
Who benefits from us (your customers) being frustrated.

Note: I have been playing for 50+ years, I know what I am talking about.

Thanks,
Mihai Buta

[Stephen Tu]

00__0906, on 2019-September-16, 11:56, said:

c/ Cards position is changed during the hand (clearly happens in "Practice - Bridge Master")

This part is *on purpose*, by design, a good thing. It's a feature of the software to teach you proper play. For example, there are hands with a 2-way finesse, where the best play is *not to guess and take it one way or the other*. Instead, you eliminate other suits, throw an opponent in, and force him to alleviate the guess or give a ruff-sluff. If you instead try to finesse, it will lose. If you replay the hand and finesse the other way, it will lose again, the opposing hands changed. You only succeed if you take the best line. Failure to take best line will be responded to by changing hand to a layout your line didn't cater to, that the best line does. (There may be a tiny handful of problems in the program where maybe there are small errors in the analysis, where maybe there is a better line that the program doesn't enforce, but the vast majority are correct)

Quote

a/ hands are far from being random
b/ Robots have visibility to all hands and play accordingly (cheating?!?)

This part is you being paranoid. It's not really happening. Count carefully statistics from a large number of hands, *not skipping anything*, I am 100% sure anything you experienced falls within normal randomness. If you are just asserting this from "feel", it is easy to remember only the tough hands with 4-1 split. 4-1 split is 28%, it's not a super rare occurrence. Why don't you count say last whatever months on myhands you declared in 8 cd trump fit, post statistics of the relevant splits, then you can prove whether or not it is deviating far from normal or not.
Robots definitely do not cheat. They are buggy. They defend atrociously at times. They definitely think differently from humans so will make some plays that look weird to us, especially on opening lead (e.g. leading passively vs NT rather than "4th from longest/strongest"). When it works out you feel like they are cheating, but really they aren't. Very often their lead can backfire. Very often their partner finds the right killing shift but then they screw it up later.

[johnu]

00__0906, on 2019-September-16, 11:56, said:

Lately (a few months) it seems like 4-1 or worse trumps distribution became the norm.

Many other similar examples suggest that:
a/ hands are far from being random
b/ Robots have visibility to all hands and play accordingly (cheating?!?)
c/ Cards position is changed during the hand (clearly happens in "Practice - Bridge Master")

While I do not mind challenging situations, when it becomes the norm (repeatedly and consistently) not only is very frustrating but alters your play.
Who benefits from us (your customers) being frustrated.

Note: I have been playing for 50+ years, I know what I am talking about.

Thanks,
Mihai Buta

Not only do all the suits break unevenly, 90% of finesses don't work, and partner never has the cards I need when I make a speculative bid. Furthermore, I never seem to get strong 2♣ opening bids and when I do, partner never has enough to bid a slam.

[FelicityR]

I remember someone posting a similar post on the forums about a couple of years ago and then doing an analysis of a large number of robot GIB hands to prove that the hands were randomly dealt. As I remember it surprised the poster that the distributions were within 1 to 2% of the statistical probabilities so GIB was not doing anything strange with the dealing.

I remember, too, someone making a comment that cards dealt in a club environment may be more 'friendly' distribution-wise if they are not shuffled properly.

As for Mr Tu's comment that robots do not cheat this video you may find funny, depending on your point of view. (Hopefully the bug's been removed.)

https://www.youtube....h?v=cQ-x_WdHFL8

[hrothgar]

00__0906, on 2019-September-16, 11:56, said:

Lately (a few months) it seems like 4-1 or worse trumps distribution became the norm.

Many other similar examples suggest that:
a/ hands are far from being random
b/ Robots have visibility to all hands and play accordingly (cheating?!?)
c/ Cards position is changed during the hand (clearly happens in "Practice - Bridge Master")

While I do not mind challenging situations, when it becomes the norm (repeatedly and consistently) not only is very frustrating but alters your play.
Who benefits from us (your customers) being frustrated.

Note: I have been playing for 50+ years, I know what I am talking about.

Thanks,
Mihai Buta

Hi Mihai

I think that you are confused about what Bridge Master is.

Bridge Master is a training tool. It is deliberately designed such that you will fail to make your contract unless you take the best line of play on a given hand. And, as you note, this means that the program will shift cards around to make sure that you can't get lucky with an inferior line that "happens to make" because of the lay of the cards. In short, the feature is working as designed.

None of this applies when you are playing against the robots, which are separate and distinct