[Vampyr]

42krunner, on 2014-May-16, 11:44, said:

Tell me about it! Yesterday I played for the QH to drop "eight never, nine ever" and to my shock -- Instead of the QH dropping my Ace of Hearts lost to the Ace of DOUBLE HEARTS!

Man, that is harsh.

[Bbradley62]

sdwcheney, on 2014-May-16, 14:25, said:

I agree, someone at BBO is editing or stacking the hands. I have reported this to the ACBL Director, but they do nothing.I feel these stacked hands encourage cheating and reward bad bidding and play. But to date BBO refuses to address theproblem, or the BBO person who is doing this. I think BBO should remove them from the payroll. I would like to see ACBL stopawarding master points on BBO until there is an investigation.I mostly play ACBL Regional Tournaments, and do not see hands of this nature, andnot three or four in a row like they seem to show up on BBO.

hrothgar, on 2014-May-16, 15:06, said:

Let's play a little gamePlease provide a specific description of how the hands on BBO are "fixed".After you go and do this, I'll analyze the next month worth of hands that you play and we'll see how well your claims accord with reality...

Better yet, tell us what the problem is so we can analyze hands you've played recently (1200+ hands over the past several weeks), so you don't think BBO is changing their routine to avoid the problem you specify.

[hrothgar]

Bbradley62, on 2014-May-16, 17:40, said:

Better yet, tell us what the problem is so we can analyze hands you've played recently (1200+ hands over the past several weeks), so you don't think BBO is changing their routine to avoid the problem you specify.

I suspect that 1200 hands gives more than enough to mine to find some silly pattern

I doubt that even the most paranoid would believe that BBO would change their entire dealing system just to ***** with them...
Making people specify a claim before the boards get dealt is a much better way to control the experiment...

[johnu]

sdwcheney, on 2014-May-16, 14:25, said:

I agree, someone at BBO is editing or stacking the hands. I have reported this to the ACBL Director, but they do nothing.
I feel these stacked hands encourage cheating and reward bad bidding and play. But to date BBO refuses to address the
problem, or the BBO person who is doing this. I think BBO should remove them from the payroll. I would like to see ACBL stop
awarding master points on BBO until there is an investigation.

I mostly play ACBL Regional Tournaments, and do not see hands of this nature, and
not three or four in a row like they seem to show up on BBO.

I'm not saying I am or am not responsible for the stacked hands, but if you send me $100, I will perform an exorcism on the card generator to return things to normal. For $1000, I can guarantee you that every finesse you take will work, and every suit will break normally. If you are not 100% satisfied, I will return almost half of your payment.

[jdgalt]

I visualize gremlins inside BBO's computer, rubbing their hands with glee. Only I don't notice any effect on hand distributions; they're too busy making my robot partners bid like morons. ;-D

[peccavi]

Kortenhoef, on 2014-May-15, 20:03, said:

Too many hands seem to be dealt by BBO which are very distribution challenged and whislt these hands can be good fun, too many of them are served up as normal on BBO and it is NOT normal to get so many of these. There have been periods where several of us have realized that someone from BBO is deliberately changing the parameters of the deal source to make it so...
Please let us play good bridge with normal hands..

I suspect that the hands you're used to - the ones you call normal - are not normal at all. Poor shuffling will not produce randomness - too many hands at a club will be bland 4-3-3-3 types or similar - club-play in my experience has very few "wild" hands because the cards are not properly randomized. Computer-dealt hands are more likely to have distributions that "test" us - BBO has computer-dealt hands - it's good to be tested - blandness is for beginners.

We do not "win" at bridge by having more honor cards than our opponents - we win by superior bidding - superior play and by making fewer mistakes. Hands with all distributions will be played by other pairs. We're challenged to play good bridge with any hand.

And how can BBO possibly gain by messing with the deals?

[Trump Echo]

johnu, on 2014-May-16, 18:45, said:

... For $1000, I can guarantee you that every finesse you take will work, and every suit will break normally. ...

Ahh, somebody has discovered what I have discovered.

I really didn't want to put this out there on the open forums, but ...

What I have learned is that, on odd numbered days, finesses will always win provided you lead from dummy. On the other, if it's an even numbered day, you want to lead from your own hand. Finesses win every single time.

This little nugget has allowed my partner and I to break the 55% barrier. We're now at about 62% on BBO.

I swear I'm not making this up.

[Bbradley62]

hrothgar, on 2014-May-16, 17:58, said:

I suspect that 1200 hands gives more than enough to mine to find some silly pattern

I doubt that even the most paranoid would believe that BBO would change their entire dealing system just to ***** with them...
Making people specify a claim before the boards get dealt is a much better way to control the experiment...

1200+ hands should be a big enough sample size to make it very difficult to find a statistically significant deviation from the norm.

[Antrax]

rcarle, on 2014-May-16, 16:23, said:

Somebody needs to take a break. There is no "fix" in. What would BBO gain from it?

In the interest of fairness, the same applies to online poker rooms and one of those was caught with a backdoor that allowed some people to peek at your cards. That's why I never play against Fred, it's too likely he'll beat me by virtue of something he's built into the system.

[Cthulhu D]

I'm pretty sure 99.99% of the complaints about computer delt hands being'distributional' is because hand dealt hands are excessively flat and people are making the comparison.

[fifee]

I think predictable. Personally, I like a few hands that are not flat.

[1eyedjack]

Antrax, on 2014-May-17, 11:24, said:

That's why I never play against Fred, it's too likely he'll beat me by virtue of something he's built into the system.

You are joking, of course. Be careful, some have no sense of humour.

Speaking personally, Fred would not need to build anything into the system to beat me. Even so if I get the chance to play him I would jump at it.

[Antrax]

I'd hoped the joke would be easy enough to get, seeing how Fred is a world-class player and I'm a low intermediate.

[barmar]

Anyone who's enough of a conspiracy theorist to think that we're cooking the hands, would have no problem assuming that Fred has put in back doors so he can cheat.

Avoiding any appearance of impropriety is probably why he doesn't play in the MBC or tourneys -- lately, he and Sheri just play Vugraph deals against robots.

[Antrax]

Bummer, I expect he could give the BBF team a hand with the JEC matches.

[1eyedjack]

The conspiracy theorists probably assume that he plays under a different ID. Let them.

[timbo1936]

I cannot understand why BBOL has these wild distributions. It cannot be random so it must be deliberate. The percentage probability of being dealt any hand with a 8 card suit is 467 in 100,000 or 0.467%. It happened to me today three times in 20 Boards which is 15% or 32 times the statistical probability.

[smerriman]

No.

[pescetom]

Erroneous post deleted

[smerriman]

No, the 0.467% probability is right; well, that's the probability of being dealt exactly an 8 card suit, though in this case you'd want to include 9 or larger as well in which case it's bumped up to 0.5%.

But that isn't the flaw in his logic; it's exactly the same basic lack of understanding of probability as other users.

In his last 20 hands on MyHands, he was indeed dealt three 8 card suits.

In the 176 hands he was dealt before that, he got one 8 card suit.

It is a complete fallacy to notice something odd (hey, I got three long suits in one session), and then calculate the probability it happened.

Otherwise I could go up to the winner of the latest lottery, and tell them I was 99.99999% sure they had cheated.