[Thranduil]

https://tinyurl.com/29m7kcoe

In the current forum Sunday daylong, the robot just passed a forcing bid - we were in a game force due to my jump rebid of 2♠, and the 4♣ bid also says it's forcing in its description.

[smerriman]

Sunday daylong is free bots, so to be expected. There is not a single piece of GIB's logic for bidding that looks at the word 'forcing' in the description, it's solely about how general rules for the next round are defined, and the crucial part of advanced GIB's logic is what handles this one.

[Thranduil]

Even a free bot should not pass in a clear game forcing sequence, regardless of what bid descriptions actually say.

[pescetom]

Thranduil, on 2024-December-22, 16:28, said:

Even a free bot should not pass in a clear game forcing sequence, regardless of what bid descriptions actually say.

Or to reverse that, descriptions should mean what they say.

[smerriman]

Thranduil, on 2024-December-22, 16:28, said:

Even a free bot should not pass in a clear game forcing sequence, regardless of what bid descriptions actually say.

The free bot was never designed to be used standalone, it was BBO's decision to intentionally disable a large portion of the code that makes the robot actually bid properly. There are countless times it will make a clearly incorrect bid or pass forcing bids, not because of a bug, but because it was specifically programmed to leave those decisions to the other part of the code.

Of course, whether BBO should be offering a half-working bot is a valid question, but in most cases issues like this aren't "fixed" by making a change to the bidding rules.

[Thranduil]

In my opinion, there is a difference between passing while in a clear game force, and making inaccurate bids (due to free bots being weaker than paid ones). Even a beginner player understands that pass is forbidden when in an obvious forcing sequence, that they need to bid something. Whether that something is a good bid or not, is a different question of course.

As for the bot's logic - it should be easy to implement a "must not pass" rule for forcing sequences so that it at least bids something - even if that something is a jump to game in the agreed fit (as a fallback9 that may result in a missed slam. That way the issue of the bid descriptions not matching what the bid actually means is fixed too.

[smerriman]

Thranduil, on 2024-December-22, 17:36, said:

it should be easy to implement a "must not pass" rule for forcing sequences

Haha, you'd think so, but no, the way the database is coded, not even close.

It *would* be easy to add a rule to handle this specific auction - it would take me approximately 3 minutes - though if BBO ever do get around to updating GIB, I suspect they'll be only focusing on issues that affect paying customers, rather than ones that the advanced robot already handles.