Hi, I'm Gerald Jacobson, the player behind BBO: PunxsyPhil.
PunxsyPhil .. Is that just a random collection of letters? Of course not; I was born in Punxsutawney. If you’d like to know more about Punxsutawney Phil, I refer you to the movie “Groundhog Day.”
One night, returning to my dorm room at Pitt late at night (circa 1963), three card players told me to sit down…that they needed a fourth for bridge. I told them I didn’t know how to play. The response: “That doesn’t matter.” And that was the beginning of my life-long bridge career.
For the next 60 years, in between bridge tournaments, I wrote computer programs, directed software contracts, taught courses in math and computer programming at a couple community colleges, and did the bookkeeping for my wife’s paralegal firm.
Ah-h-h-h! Retirement! So finally time to relax at my wonderful CCRC (Continuing Care and Retirement Community). Except they have a daily schedule similar to what you might find on a cruise ship. And I love it here so much I want to contribute to that environment. That means: I direct our bridge tournament, offer classes in bridge, offer supervised bridge sessions, teach pickleball, run the Bingo games, deal blackjack, run the horseshoe tournaments, and serve on the billiards committee. Then I also just participate in other activities, such as ping pong, golf, bocce ball, bola ball, bean bag toss, dart practice, scrabble, and numerous card games such as gin rummy, hearts, spades, Uno, phase 10, and 5 crowns. Help!
BBO is a lifesaver for a lot of us seniors. Night driving is not our favorite activity, so BBO gives us an outlet for bridge right from our apartment. And I have to tell you, it is so nice not to have to put up with those bridge egos every weekend.
I need a minimum of 2 hours a day on BBO to maintain my current standing. With my schedule of activities mentioned above, I don’t have a set time … I just fit it in whenever I can. That means I am often up at wee hours of the morning to fulfill that 2-hour minimum, which also means I often fall asleep in front of the screen. The other problem I have with online bridge is playing the wrong contract: If I’m actually in 3 diamonds, and I’m thinking it would be nice to be in 3NT, sometimes I end up playing as if it is indeed 3NT. It is so frustrating.
But my one big advantage that supersedes these shortcomings: The robots are afraid of me! Which I can prove with a hand from my early days with BBO. Not being familiar with GIB bidding, I ended up in 7NT off 2 aces. The hand on lead had both aces, but here’s where the fear factor comes in. He was afraid to double. And what a wise decision it was! He underled one of the aces (4th best?), and I took 6 tricks in each of the other 2 suits!
And for players not familiar with robots, remember that you are playing against software that will do the same thing in the same situation. There are several card combinations where you might be able to know which hand has the key card you are looking for or whether to violate the principle of restricted choice, based on your observations from a multitude of previous hands.
One other thing: Be sure to take frequent advantage of the online explanations of bids. Some fairly obvious bids may not mean to the robots what you think they mean. Sandbagging will not work. And you may have to pass in a lot of auctions where you want to bid so badly, because GIB will assume you have many more points than you’ve got..
Side note from PunxsyPhil:
A quick comment about Dave Smith, whose bio recently appeared in BBO’s News section. I lived in the San Francisco area for a couple years in the ’70s. My knockout teams met Dave’s in half a dozen tournaments over that span. The closest half-time score we could muster during that time was something like 2–39.