Robot dublicate
There are several different way to entertain yourself with bridge. In addition to old-fashioned tournaments and money-games, today you can go online and play there. You can play with friends, you can play with strangers and you can play even with robots. The latter is going to be the topic of the current article.
ACBL robot duplicate is a funny tournament. There is one human player and three robots on each table. Every human player sits in the South chair and they always have the same cards, the same robot partner and the same two robot opponents. If you think about it, this is the most fair bridge tournament: every participant has a partner and opponents with equal abilities, who will always make the same decision under the same circumstances. If your robot-partner ends up as the declarer, it will politely exchange seats with you to allow you to play the hand.
There is another advantage to those robot games - robots are extremely patient. No matter how badly I play, none of them has ever called me an idiot. However, achieving this is one of my life goals. I hope that one day even a robot will lose its patience with me and will tell me what it really thinks about my bidding.
Case in point:
I would not dare to open 1NT with the South hand if playing with any human. It is not so much that I regard this as a bad bid. I actually regard 1NT opening here as a terrible and completely insane bid, but that is not my main concern.
My main concern about opening 1NT with 6-4-3-1 distribution are my bad legs. I cannot run fast enough in case my partner would try to kill me after seeing my cards. If there were at least a couple of bridge players in the jury, they would certainly find him not guilty.
However, if my partner is a robot I can do whatever I want. I paid my 1-dollar entry fee and I am free to perform any perversions. In the bridge sense only, of course.
In the diagrammed board West Robot led the fourth best diamond. I took the trick by 8 in my hand and continue diamond. West Robot took the trick with Ace and…
Try to put yourself in his shoes. Hmm, it could be hard because the Robot probably has no shoes, but lets try. He sees the singleton spade on the table and he remembers that the declarer open 1NT. Robots are good at counting. West Robot calculated that his Partner must have 5 cards of spade suit, so it played spade on the third round. It did not take me long to take the rest of tricks and collect all the match points.
By the way, I can clearly recollect that my Robot partner did not show a sign of appreciation for my great play. He did not congratulate me and or even say thank you for the “well deserved” top. Yes… playing with robots has its downsides too.
ACBL robot duplicate is a funny tournament. There is one human player and three robots on each table. Every human player sits in the South chair and they always have the same cards, the same robot partner and the same two robot opponents. If you think about it, this is the most fair bridge tournament: every participant has a partner and opponents with equal abilities, who will always make the same decision under the same circumstances. If your robot-partner ends up as the declarer, it will politely exchange seats with you to allow you to play the hand.
There is another advantage to those robot games - robots are extremely patient. No matter how badly I play, none of them has ever called me an idiot. However, achieving this is one of my life goals. I hope that one day even a robot will lose its patience with me and will tell me what it really thinks about my bidding.
Case in point:
I would not dare to open 1NT with the South hand if playing with any human. It is not so much that I regard this as a bad bid. I actually regard 1NT opening here as a terrible and completely insane bid, but that is not my main concern.
My main concern about opening 1NT with 6-4-3-1 distribution are my bad legs. I cannot run fast enough in case my partner would try to kill me after seeing my cards. If there were at least a couple of bridge players in the jury, they would certainly find him not guilty.
However, if my partner is a robot I can do whatever I want. I paid my 1-dollar entry fee and I am free to perform any perversions. In the bridge sense only, of course.
In the diagrammed board West Robot led the fourth best diamond. I took the trick by 8 in my hand and continue diamond. West Robot took the trick with Ace and…
Try to put yourself in his shoes. Hmm, it could be hard because the Robot probably has no shoes, but lets try. He sees the singleton spade on the table and he remembers that the declarer open 1NT. Robots are good at counting. West Robot calculated that his Partner must have 5 cards of spade suit, so it played spade on the third round. It did not take me long to take the rest of tricks and collect all the match points.
By the way, I can clearly recollect that my Robot partner did not show a sign of appreciation for my great play. He did not congratulate me and or even say thank you for the “well deserved” top. Yes… playing with robots has its downsides too.