March 2024 - 6

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Bot bidding stinks
One of the oldest bridge insults is the zinger, " I
know you learned to play yesterday, but what time
yesterday? " Such trash-talking is no longer allowed
in the age of Zero Tolerance, of course, but the line is
experiencing a resurgence in one part of the modern
game: robot bidding.
Bridge-playing programs - " bots " - are effective
PAUL LINXWILER
editor@acbl.org
in the area of card play. Even without the detestable
practice of " peeking, " in which robots can sometimes
be allowed to see all or part of their partners'
hands, the level of declarer and defensive play
exhibited by bots is reasonably good. But a frequent
topic of correspondence that I receive from members
involves complaints about robot bidding.
Because Bridge Base Online (BBO) currently dominates
the online play market, most of the dissatisfaction
I hear about is related to BBO robot games. The bidding inadequacies
of robots is not unique to BBO, of course, but with tens of thousands of people
playing on their site at any given time, BBO is often the target of ACBL member
ire. And the sheer number of participants makes BBO's ability to respond
to complaints on their site nearly impossible.
The typical scenario is this: Member X is playing in a robot game, the auction
takes a weird turn, Mr. X's robot partner takes a bad view of the situation,
and it bids something strange. The result is catastrophic, and Mr. X - enraged
at paying good money for this abuse - fires off a Letter to the Editor because
he already knows BBO doesn't care enough to respond themselves or is too
overwhelmed to do so.
I have lost track of the number of times this has happened. It would be easy
for me to reply to Mr. X that this is not my problem. After all, the ACBL and
BBO are different companies. Yes, we sanction games on their site, but how is
this different from a bad bid made by a human partner in a live club game? As
a robot bridge enthusiast, however, I have quite a bit of sympathy for Mr. X, as
I have been the victim of robot idiocy in the auction on numerous occasions. I
let Mr. X cry on my digital shoulder and share my own tales of robot woe in an
effort to console him. (And, no, dear readers, I do not wish to encourage this
behavior. I'm an editor, not a therapist.)
But the question always arises in these encounters: When are the companies
who provide bot play going to do something about the quality of robot
bidding? It's clear from the explanations that bots provide about the meanings
of their own calls that inconsistencies exist, and vagaries abound. Players who
are experienced using bots know to avoid certain bidding sequences in order
to prevent the bots from doing something disastrous. But is that bridge?
Unlike chess programs, which are superior to most of the top players in the
world, the programs that play bridge are still lacking in the language component
of our game: bidding. Customers want something better. 2
6 | Bridge Bulletin | March 2024
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EDITOR
Paul Linxwiler
ASSOCIATE EDITOR
Chip Dombrowski
ASSOCIATE EDITOR
Amy Casanova
GRAPHIC DESIGN / LAYOUT
Liza Frisbie
Lisa Jackson
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March 2024

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of March 2024
