Playing against two robots
When playing against two robots in last night's EBU game I explained to my partner (via Chat) that the robots think we're playing the same system as them and that there's no point in posting an explanation of a bid. It occurred to me that if there isn't anybody to see the table chat then unlawful information could be passed between two players. Is there anything to stop this?
Comments
Yes, there is a record of all chat, which is available to us. I have occasionally looked for that sort of thing, but it's a bit impractical to search every time there is a robot pair.
I suppose the best way to counter anything untoward like that would be to have a director alerted to two good results against two robots (more if playing more than two board rounds). That would need a change by BBO, I guess. I wonder if directors who run club sessions on BBO are aware of this possibility? Perhaps it would be something a director could do in hindsight by just looking at the chat against two robots of the top three (say) results? It's unlikely to be a major problem and not worth spending too much time on but thanks Gordon for your comment.
On Thursday in the relaxed high, one pair left for a long time and I put two robots in (NS). I stayed at the table basically to tell the players at the start of each round why there were robots (and to tell them they could make use of the information the robots provided). There shouldn't be more than one table with two robots (unless losing connection is endemic).
(One pair greeted the two robots and sent them a summary of their system in chat. Nice to see them adhering to the rules.)
I always thank my partner as declarer when playing with a robot. It's easier to do than to remember not to.
I self-alert when playing against robot pairs so that the meaning of the calls will be available in the hand record (and because it's technically a requirement even though the robots don't care).
This reminded me to check BB 4A8 – I remembered that players have a duty to ensure that their opponents were aware of their alerts, and wondered if it was possible to comply with that in a game against a robot pair. However, 4A8 requires players to "make all reasonable efforts to ensure that both opponents are aware of the alert", so this is trivially complied with when playing against robots (as there are no efforts that can reasonably be made).