[odiek]

In the BBO ABCL Online Tournaments, I realize that there is a criteria for "best hand for south." But, other than programming to see that south gets the strongest hand, are the hands randomly dealt? That is, are these hands "borrowed" from hands that proved to be interesting in the past? Or are there any other criteria entered into the software program, besides south perhaps getting more points? Thank you - Odiek

[steve2005]

Only the Robots Games have human best (or equal) hand. They sit South.
The instant robot masterpoint games are playing hands already played by other players so are not random,
If playing at a robot table I believe the table owner can set parameters for hamds. They for sure can do this at bidding tables. Also, you can load your own set of hands or use vugraph hands.
Otherwise hands are supposed to be random. As always there could be some exception I am not aware of.

[hrothgar]

odiek, on 2017-September-05, 08:59, said:

That is, are these hands "borrowed" from hands that proved to be interesting in the past?

No

Quote

Or are there any other criteria entered into the software program, besides south perhaps getting more points?

No

[johnu]

steve2005, on 2017-September-05, 09:27, said:

The instant robot masterpoint games are playing hands already played by other players so are not random,

The hands that were played in the original tournament were randomly dealt. I don't know the algorithm for choosing which past tournament is used for the instant tournament, but for practical purposes, you can consider that as also randomly chosen.

[johnu]

If you pay an additional $.10 per tournament, all of your finesses will be onside. If you have a 2 way finesse, both possible finesses will work.

[barmar]

johnu, on 2017-September-06, 00:09, said:

The hands that were played in the original tournament were randomly dealt. I don't know the algorithm for choosing which past tournament is used for the instant tournament, but for practical purposes, you can consider that as also randomly chosen.

The original tournament was a best-hand robot tourney, so the hands are obviously best-hand when being replayed in the instant tourney.

The criteria is that the original is at least 2 weeks old, there were at least 15 players, and you didn't play in it originally or as a previous instant tourney. We also try to use a tourney that was played with the current version of GIB (to avoid swings because of robot differences), but because of that 2-week age requirement, it takes them that long to start switching over.