Pete takes a close look at GIBBO, BBO’s new robot, and how it behaves at the table compared to classic GIB.
He plays through a set of real hands, focusing on opening leads, card play, and how GIBBO handles trickier situations. He also checks whether some familiar GIB “traps” still work, and where the two robots begin to diverge. Rather than offering a verdict, Pete shares straightforward observations on what feels familiar and what doesn’t.
GIBBO is now the default robot in most BBO games (unless an event says otherwise), so this gives a good sense of how it will react for you at the table.
Have you played with GIBBO yet? What differences have you noticed compared to GIB? Let us know in the comments.
Thanks a lot Pete for all your nice contributions: As for BBO bots' bidding, they are missing a top level bridge player to program them. My bots' performance is miles above them: they get -6.6 IMPs vs. -5.5 when I partner one and -1.8 for my own bots. Those IMPs compare to best contracts under 200 deals built to test systems.
the new gibbo is much better on opening leads
You can lead a robot to the bridge but you cant make him think. So all in all pretty useless.
I have noticed the descriptions of their own bids are often incorect.
The bid explanations are often not accurate leading to the wrong contract
I hate them. Let's go back to the original robots. Or give us a choice with each hand.
This is all well and good, but BBO will never be really any good until it is "cured" of manufacturing extreme distribution ...and if and when it learns a call is almost always ,always warranted when ,say, you 7 or 8 pieces of a suit or 10+ cards in 2 suits.
They tend to lead away from honors instead of always passive leads.
Passive leads are good, especially double dummy. They're still good single dummy but not by as much.
Maybe the neural network network being trained with real games adjusted for this. For instance, while under leading an unsupporged K is bad, it's not AS bad as double dummy would suggest.
For example if dummy has Axxxx and declarer Qxx. If you held Kx2 and lead the the 2. If decarer let it ride to the Q DD it's clearly a terrible lead. But sometimes seeing the 2 decaler might be afraid of a stiff and goes up with the A.