[timouthy]

I played in a vacb (virtual club) tourney today (6/7/2023) as a substitute with a Howell movement. In 20 hands, I received, count them, 3 Yarboroughs(two of them back to back). The probability of one Yarborough is 1/1828 (https://jlmartin.ku..../yarborough.pdf). So the probability of three of them in one tourney is (1/1828) x (1/1828) x (1/1828) or 1/6108415552, or in plain English, one in 6 trillion!

We came in 2nd place, so I was curious how many of these Yarboroughs were given to the 1st place team, and you guessed it, not one. Now I am a suspicious person by nature, so this occurrence made me an even more suspicious one. But more importantly it made me wonder: In this modern era where we have machines that can deal any specific arrangement of cards, why in Satan's name can we not make sure no person, no matter how much they deserve 3 Yarboroughs in one tourney, ever has it happen to them?

I love BBO. They do lots of things right. The learning curve is like learning on steroids. But I have many suggestions for things that need improvement and this is definitely one of them.

Timouthy

[smerriman]

Firstly, your numbers are a *long* way off. Over 20 hands, the chance that you'll be dealt three or more Yarboroughs is actually about 1 in 5.4 million, due to the fact you have 20 opportunities to be dealt such a hand and there are many different sets of 3 amongst that. (In the same way, there's a 1 in 92 chance you'll see at least one Yarborough over a 20 board stretch - considerably more likely than 1 in 1828).

Secondly, checking to see if someone has been dealt a small number of points in the past, and then intentionally biasing the deals to ensure they receive more points later.. just makes no sense whatsoever. So your partner picks up a couple of huge hands early on.. now you know they'll probably have bad hands the rest of the day to give the opponents a fair shot, and can adjust your decision making accordingly?

Random dealing - which is what BBO does - so you're just as likely to receive any hand at all, no matter what happened in the past, is the only sensible option.

[johnu]

I've checked the records and you aren't a member of the Platinum Latinum Executive BBO Club. These members are guaranteed to never get a hand with less than 10 HCP. In order to balance out hands, non members have to get the yarboroughs. It's simple economics and nothing against you personally.

[AL78]

smerriman, on 2023-June-07, 19:06, said:

Firstly, your numbers are a *long* way off. Over 20 hands, the chance that you'll be dealt three or more Yarboroughs is actually about 1 in 5.4 million, due to the fact you have 20 opportunities to be dealt such a hand and there are many different sets of 3 amongst that. (In the same way, there's a 1 in 92 chance you'll see at least one Yarborough over a 20 board stretch - considerably more likely than 1 in 1828).

Secondly, checking to see if someone has been dealt a small number of points in the past, and then intentionally biasing the deals to ensure they receive more points later.. just makes no sense whatsoever. So your partner picks up a couple of huge hands early on.. now you know they'll probably have bad hands the rest of the day to give the opponents a fair shot, and can adjust your decision making accordingly?

Random dealing - which is what BBO does - so you're just as likely to receive any hand at all, no matter what happened in the past, is the only sensible option.

This is related to what happened at my local club either last year or the year before. We have a competition where a beginner/improver is partnered with an experienced player and there is a trophy for the winning beginner. One year there was a large bias in the way the hands went where the beginners hardly got to declare a hand, I think one person only declared once in 24 boards and this was consistent across the field so unlikely to be anything to do with the beginners themselves. Some of them felt disgruntled by this and it defeats the object of giving the beginners an opportunity to learn from an experienced player during a duplicate session. It was decided in future when dealing boards for this competition to check the deal for a large bias and redeal if the hands look to be heavily biased.

[AL78]

I don't think you can correct for that and even if you could I'm not convinced it is reasonable to do so. What happened to you on BBO is comparable to what occasionally happens to me at my F2F club such as only declaring twice in 24 boards, or the opponents get three slams their way and partner and I get bad scores because three quarters of the field don't bid them. There is unfortunately a significant luck element in duplicate bridge and you have to take the bad days on the chin.

[timouthy]

smerriman, on 2023-June-07, 19:06, said:

Firstly, your numbers are a *long* way off. Over 20 hands, the chance that you'll be dealt three or more Yarboroughs is actually about 1 in 5.4 million, due to the fact you have 20 opportunities to be dealt such a hand and there are many different sets of 3 amongst that. (In the same way, there's a 1 in 92 chance you'll see at least one Yarborough over a 20 board stretch - considerably more likely than 1 in 1828).

Secondly, checking to see if someone has been dealt a small number of points in the past, and then intentionally biasing the deals to ensure they receive more points later.. just makes no sense whatsoever. So your partner picks up a couple of huge hands early on.. now you know they'll probably have bad hands the rest of the day to give the opponents a fair shot, and can adjust your decision making accordingly?

Random dealing - which is what BBO does - so you're just as likely to receive any hand at all, no matter what happened in the past, is the only sensible option.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I knew one of you "smart" guys would post this, just because all three were not all in a row. As if 1 in 5.4 million is a tolerable level. None of us here will likely play even 1 million hands in their lifetimes. Your next paragraph completely misses the point as I expected. Let me try again. If there is a way to prevent this from happening to anyone, especially when there is a Howell movement (for hopefully obvious reasons by now), then lets get a move on. The whole idea of duplicate is a great one for obvious reasons, but making a small change like the one I have suggested would not be detracting from the duplicate "business model" in the slightest.

[smerriman]

timouthy, on 2023-June-08, 00:26, said:

but making a small change like the one I have suggested would not be detracting from the duplicate "business model" in the slightest.

You haven't made a specific suggestion. What is your suggestion? If a 20 board match has a side receiving 3 Yarboroughs, redeal the hands? What about 2 Yarboroughs, or 3 hands with under 3 points, or maybe someone getting two 23+ point hands, or two 9 card suits, or ones where almost all of the finesses for one side lose (a much more common complaint) - where would you like to draw the line? (In any set of boards, you'll be able to find once-in-millions patterns that you'd likely never see again; it's a well-known fallacy that rare events like this shouldn't happen.)

If you want hand-crafted tournaments that don't use random hands, BBO already provide this functionality; TD's can upload pre-dealt hands (like they do for Goulash). If a specific TD knew what your criteria were, and agreed it was worthwhile, then they can generate hands that meet those criteria and upload them for you. But if they decide a tournament should use random hands, then random hands is what you'll get.

[mycroft]

But remember, it isn't "a side". This is a Howell, nobody gets the exact same hands as you.

But say we do this. We make sure that no (NE/SW) pair gets (whatever). And then Q, my favourite complainer, sits N and W. Now even if those three were in the same two sets, nobody else got them. Now, let's talk about the things that could happen:

There were 4 stiff kings Tuesday night.

I got four rounds where I had more than 10 HCP on every hand (2 of them 2C openers, and a 2NT opener) to start the game Sunday. (of course, I paid it back the rest of the game, with 4-6 flat...)

I can't remember the "never happened before" on Thursday, but I'm sure it was there.

I still remember that I tracked one game after I started and started feeling hard done by (2nd round of 7). The last hand was a 14 count - and I opened an Acol 2. I think I had one other double-digit hand; I averaged 7.2 HCP over 28 boards. It was a 4 table Howell. We won (now I might have been the third best player in the room, and my partner was obviously the first best. But still).

[timouthy]

smerriman, on 2023-June-08, 00:45, said:

You haven't made a specific suggestion. What is your suggestion? If a 20 board match has a side receiving 3 Yarboroughs, redeal the hands? What about 2 Yarboroughs, or 3 hands with under 3 points, or maybe someone getting two 23+ point hands, or two 9 card suits, or ones where almost all of the finesses for one side lose (a much more common complaint) - where would you like to draw the line? (In any set of boards, you'll be able to find once-in-millions patterns that you'd likely never see again; it's a well-known fallacy that rare events like this shouldn't happen.)

If you want hand-crafted tournaments that don't use random hands, BBO already provide this functionality; TD's can upload pre-dealt hands (like they do for Goulash). If a specific TD knew what your criteria were, and agreed it was worthwhile, then they can generate hands that meet those criteria and upload them for you. But if they decide a tournament should use random hands, then random hands is what you'll get.

Ok, ok, ok let me be clear by pointing up a scenario. Lets say one seat was dealt 20 straight Yarboroughs in a 20 hand tourney. Would you still be praying to the almighty god of random hand generation? It sounds like you, smerriman, personally would be no matter what every team getting these crappy hands felt about it. Now the idea of random hand generation is a very good way to do things generally and that should always be the starting point. Here's what you do now. Program the hand generation program to detect if every hand has a Yarborough in one seat location and if so, throw one out. Now generate another replacement hand and detect if this hand is now a Yarborough and if it isn't, include it. I call this small modification to your way of doing business, Sympathetic Random Hand Generation. It sounds like you would still call it hand-crafted and that's well...sad!

[mycroft]

I am well known for getting bad hands in first seat. So much so, in fact, that there's a joke that "mycroft has a convention on his card that isn't on his partners'. It's called APAD - Always Pass As Dealer".

Is it confirmation bias? Of course.

Do I complain when I play EHAA (which opens 50% of hands as preempts, never mind the good ones) and I pass as dealer 6 of 7 times? Of course. Is it bad for our game? Of course.

The hand sets where E-W get all the cards are bad if you're N-S (and you need the odd yarb if you're going to get 2NT or 2C openers). But now if it's a Howell, sure the stationary pair is going to hate it, but everybody else gets good cards on half the boards. A different half if it's a 4 table Howell or a 6 table Howell, of course, or if you're at table 2 to start instead of table 3.

It's not pleasant. It is fair. Any "restraint" on random hands is less fair, even if it's more pleasant. And the WC experts and the CEO clients can and will use computer analysis to work out the restraints and how they can take advantage of them.

I had a run of really good card holding last week. I accept it and move on, knowing there will be days when the opposite applies.

[pescetom]

On the wall opposite the reception desk at a Youth Hostel in the Lake District of England: "there is no such thing as bad weather, just different kinds of weather".

I can't say I have always agreed, but it never occurred to consider myself a victim when it rained yet again.

[AL78]

pescetom, on 2023-June-08, 12:56, said:

On the wall opposite the reception desk at a Youth Hostel in the Lake District of England: "there is no such thing as bad weather, just different kinds of weather".

A statement which can easily shown to be incorrect:

https://www.youtube....h?v=gUWufMuidD8
https://www.youtube....h?v=8CyZVFB4Sco
https://www.youtube....XKaL2iYQo&t=99s
https://www.youtube....h?v=o6cTEvQDoVE

That is from the UK, a country that doesn't fair highly on the leaderboard of natural disasters. Other countries have much worse weather.

[pescetom]

AL78, on 2023-June-08, 13:08, said:

That is from the UK, a country that doesn't fair highly on the leaderboard of natural disasters. Other countries have much worse weather.

The anecdote was from 45 years ago, nobody is questioning or minimizing climate change.
At the time in that area it was rare to encounter a day with no rain, occasionally it poured down all day.
People walked onto the next Youth Hostel all the same.
Random deals in a Howell at MP are not much different IMHO.

[AL78]

pescetom, on 2023-June-08, 14:55, said:

The anecdote was from 45 years ago, nobody is questioning or minimizing climate change.
At the time in that area it was rare to encounter a day with no rain, occasionally it poured down all day.
People walked onto the next Youth Hostel all the same.
Random deals in a Howell at MP are not much different IMHO.

I wasn't intending to imply anything about climate change at all, what I was attempting to do is claim that this saying which is often quoted is a long way from the truth, the Norwegians are quoted as saying there is no such thing as bad weather only inappropriate clothing which also irritates me. I get that it is saying for most weather people might class as bad you can dress appropriately and deal with it, but there clearly exists a point when weather transitions from nuisance to dangerous/destructive which is clearly definable as "bad" weather.

Apologies for going off topic and derailing this thread.

Back to bridge, you can be on the wrong side of a hand bias where you seem to follow the worst hands at the table and you are competing against those who sat the other way and were able to do something with good hands. It is one of my bugbears of duplicate bridge, when you have a string of poor hands you can be at the mercy of what your opponents do, be that bidding the slam no-one else finds or failing to bid a cold game that is bid across the field, and there is a feeling of having little influence on the game when you are frequently passing and following suit. It is not as bad as IMP pairs where being on the wrong side of a couple of slams can cost 20+ imps for doing nothing wrong, but it is still a pain when it happens at MPs. Ultimately you have to do what you can with the cards you are dealt, a bit like life really,and a bit like backpacking in the pouring rain when you have to trek for 7-8 hours in it to get to your next overnight stop.

Sometimes I wish the skill to luck ratio of bridge was closer to that of chess, but I guess the game wouldn't be anywhere near as popular if doing well was entirely down to who played the best overall and players had to work hard to improve if they wanted to have a fair chance at winning.