[1eyedjack]

I would quite like it if all robot tournaments had one table reserved to be occupied entirely by 4 robots.

If that is unpalatable, could we have them at least for Instant tourneys? Or even as an option for Instant tourneys?

Maybe not possible (without ACBL agreement) to do this in ACBL sanctioned robot tourneys, but for the rest ...?

[Bbradley62]

If you mean for this to be included in the free 10-player games, hopefully you mean in addition to the 10 tables, not in place of one of the 10 tables.

[barmar]

1eyedjack, on 2016-July-31, 02:24, said:

Maybe not possible (without ACBL agreement) to do this in ACBL sanctioned robot tourneys, but for the rest ...?

We could probably do it if we don't include that table in the IMP/MP scoring. It would just be there to compare with for fun.

At our ftf club, we used to run occasional IMP Pairs games where there was a table with two expert pairs, and their scores were used as the datum to compare everyone else's scores with. I think there was once a suggestion to do something like that on BBO, where the all-robot table is used as the datum.

[1eyedjack]

Bbradley62, on 2016-July-31, 23:28, said:

If you mean for this to be included in the free 10-player games, hopefully you mean in addition to the 10 tables, not in place of one of the 10 tables.

Nothing was further from my mind than the free 10-player games. And now you bring the subject up, I couldn't give a Zabriskan Fontema's neuron whether the all-robot table replaced, or was in addition to, one of the existing 10 human tables, or even whether it was provided at all in those events.

[1eyedjack]

barmar, on 2016-July-31, 23:46, said:

We could probably do it if we don't include that table in the IMP/MP scoring. It would just be there to compare with for fun.

Either way would serve my purpose. I would have no objection to the all-robot table being embedded in the movement and scoring table. If that makes it more difficult to implement, then exclude it. Likewise if there were widespread objections to their inclusion then exclude them. On that point I couldn't give a gnat's left testicle. Personally I would have expected it to be more of a programming effort to implement it as a memorandum outwith the movement, but I bow to your expertise on that.

But thinking again about it, particularly if left outside the main movement, there should be scope for including an all-robot table as a "memorandum" comparison in a whole host of tournaments in addition to the robot tournaments. The monthly Royals and Masters might be a case in point, as a number of humans partner robots in those and might be interested to see how robots would have dealt with their own hands.

It might be an effective marketing tool for robot tourneys or robot hire. If an all-human tournament showed the results of an all-robot table for comparison, it might lure some players into trying robots who had not considered it before.

I would be quite keen for the all-robot results to be loaded into the MyHands database, and I cannot help feeling that that might require that the robot table is fully integrated into the scoring table/movement, but that is speculation by me, and I am not in a position to give an opinion there.

[barmar]

1eyedjack, on 2016-August-01, 02:33, said:

Either way would serve my purpose. I would have no objection to the all-robot table being embedded in the movement and scoring table. If that makes it more difficult to implement, then exclude it. Likewise if there were widespread objections to their inclusion then exclude them.

I don't think it makes much difference to the implementation, I was mainly thinking about whether players would like to lose masterpoints because a robot played better than them. And whether ACBL would consider the robots to be valid competitors for calculating rankings and masterpoint awards.

[1eyedjack]

Yes I already acknowledged that the ACBL could be a thorn in the side.

I am mainly trying to address a long-standing shortcoming the solution to which does not look like being beyond the wit of man.

Time and again it is a curiosity how a robot would have fared in a human seat. More than a mere curiosity, really. Frequently the brief GIB system notes allow for the possibility of a choice of calls, and observing how GIB actually behaves when faced with the precise scenario helps us to understand the undocumented reality of GIB system.

Knowing how you would have ranked overall would be an added bonus. And if several months' records were uploaded to MyHands it would allow some members other than GIB developers some data to chew over. Especially if they then download these results by the month to Double Dummy Solver (or have access to Stephen Pickett's BridgeBrowser).

But the core problem, of seeing how GIB would have behaved on a particular hand, could be achieved by alternative means, given the will.

Having an all-GIB table at every tournament would place an additional stress on the GIB server, which comes at a financial cost to BBO where perhaps not every tournament has entrants who are interested in that result. A less costly solution would be to have a GIBGIB button (or whatever you want to call it) next to the current GIB button on any hand history. If the hand was in a tournament that you have already paid to enter, or have already hired GIB, pressing on the GIBGIB button would force the hand to be replayed beginning to end with an all-GIB cast. Much the way that Lycier currently does regularly for hands posted in the robot subforum but presumably at some effort (and I think only with the basic GIB under hire).

If the hand was in a tournament that the user had paid to play, or if he had rented advanced GIB for the day, then pressing GIBGIB would invoke advanced GIB at all 4 seats.

If the user had rented basic GIB for a week, but not paid to play in the specific event, then pressing GIBGIB would invoke basic GIB at all 4 seats

If the user had not rented any GIB and had not paid to play in the event, then either GIBGIB button would be greyed out or clicking on it would pop up an invitation to rent GIB to proceed.

All that said, the original proposal, of forcing an all-GIB comparison on the public, despite the cost, may have the added marketing bonus of attracting more players to play in robot tourneys for which they pay, and that may overcome the financial overhead.

So many ways to skin a cat. But I personally find that the only existing solution, of renting an advanced GIB and then going through the Lycier solution of manually setting up a table to re-play a hand with all GIB participants is (1) an effort too far and (2) a bit galling to have to pay for a GIB again just for that purpose having already paid once to play in the tournament that generated the hand.