Grant Peacock - A Story of the Win
Grant Peacock (GrantP) has recently made headlines in the bridge world with his ...
Gabby Kamil from the USA, known to many as Gab7nt on BBO, has topped the leaderboard in August's Women's Daylong Reward games, racking up an impressive 23.52 points. We had the pleasure of catching up with Gabby to hear more about her journey to the top. Let's find out how she did it.
I'm a bridge player and Vedic astrologer with two miniature schnauzers (Ruby and Vesper) and two cats: a maine coon and a bombay. I'm married to Michael Kamil, and we rarely argue about anything aside from bridge!
I started playing at the Columbia University bridge club in 1990. I remember overcalling one diamond on the first hand I ever played, and feeling thrilled when fellow student and club director, Blair Seidler, informed me that I had bid correctly.
I hope my success encourages other women players to learn robot bridge strategy.
I think robot bridge success requires not just being a skilled player, but also learning how to get into the bots' minds. I also picked up some tricks along the way from looking into Jim Munday's games. There are so many robot tips; where to begin? Something that most players might not realize is that the bots plan their defenses entirely trusting their opponents' bidding. So if you lie about your hand, and hopefully survive the auction, you have a huge advantage as declarer.
I play on BBO almost every day. Actually the thing I enjoy most about BBO is playing goulash. It's like poker bridge. Lots of opportunity to use intuition, one of the stronger parts of my game. I've been playing on BBO for fourteen years. I enjoy all kinds of bridge, but I must admit the robots keep me coming back for more. I also play on BBO with my sponsors, so I can thank BBO for helping me with my career.
I wish other experienced women players would take the time to learn the robots. It seems as though not many have gotten into it. I'd tell them it's not exactly regular bridge, but it's a great game in and of itself.
Congratulations to Gabby on a great win. Thanks for sharing your experience with us, and hopefully it inspires women bridge players everywhere to keep playing and improving.
Gabby, I find the frustrating part of playing with robots is that there are no carding conventions, so you don't know what they're trying to communicate with carding. How do you deal with that
Hi Karen,
You're right, it's frustrating that the robots don't communicate much (if any) info with their signals. I think I have an advantage having played professionally for years with partners who don't signal correctly. For the most part this makes defenses pure guesswork, which isn't usually too hard, especially considering everyone else in the field is in the same position.
No surprise. About a year and a half ago, I started keeping an ELO score of the BBO performance of a few friends and me. Gabby has been almost consistently in the lead.
Congrats Gabby. Research on how to play with and against robots is scarce. Thanks for revealing some of your strategies.
Thanks, Rick. I would definitely be interested in sharing robot tips with a wide audience, especially because, like you say, there isn't much already out there on the topic. I will contact BBO to see if they have interest in posting a video of me discussing bot tactics.
I'm not surprised that Gabby won. She is just great at robot bridge. It would be nice to see a top-level open robot event where everyone plays the same boards, live. I'd like to see Gabby compete with the top male robot players. That would be a fair fight.
That would be lots of fun, both to participate in and to watch, especially if you provide the commentary. Maybe split screen each board in real time for the kibitzers?