[Ditherer]

A French AI research team has challenged some top players to a tournament against their bridge playing robot. It is being live streamed on YouTube today and tomorrow: https://youtu.be/pKzzIOyHJhQ So far, they have shown people chatting in French, plus the team leader welcoming the human competitors in English. Hopefully, they will start showing the matches soon ...

[pilowsky]

The team is headed by Veronique Ventos - AI specialist.
Here she is discussing the Bridge AI problem in 2018.

[pescetom]

VV has been promising for a long time, so it's good to see some concrete output at last.
Of course the first real test is comparison with the best existing robots.

[smerriman]

I saw this a while ago and was a bit disappointed after learning all auctions would be 1NT - 2NT - 3NT. There's only so much you can do with those hands.. I expect any decent robot will beat humans on fatigue factor alone. Still, will be interesting nonetheless.

[pescetom]

smerriman, on 2022-March-24, 12:44, said:

I saw this a while ago and was a bit disappointed after learning all auctions would be 1NT - 2NT - 3NT. There's only so much you can do with those hands.. I expect any decent robot will beat humans on fatigue factor alone. Still, will be interesting nonetheless.

So it's only about play?
I connected today to have a look but they were taking a pause and I was busy later.
One of the selling points of VV was comprehensible description of agreements to human opponents, so I did hope it was capable of bidding and explaining SEF (or whatever) at least.

[johnu]

pescetom, on 2022-March-24, 13:42, said:

So it's only about play?

Probably because an AI for bidding hasn't been completed yet.

[etha]

It isn't even a sensible auction. At least make it a real auction like 1NT 3NT. And can anyone who speaks french explain what the hell scoring system they are using. Its not imps point a board or total points. ok it looks like the crazy scoring system is tricks won as declarer. So this isn't really bridge either in the auction or the scoring, just the play where the hand is known to within very small limits as it opened 1NT. It would be interesting to see how jack does at this I would expect it to beat the humans as well.

[johnu]

etha, on 2022-March-26, 07:16, said:

It isn't even a sensible auction. At least make it a real auction like 1NT 3NT. And can anyone who speaks french explain what the hell scoring system they are using. Its not imps point a board or total points. ok it looks like the crazy scoring system is tricks won as declarer. So this isn't really bridge either in the auction or the scoring, just the play where the hand is known to within very small limits as it opened 1NT. It would be interesting to see how jack does at this I would expect it to beat the humans as well.

It doesn't really matter what the bidding looks like. The play is the only thing that is being analyzed. And if you are playing 2NT as invitational, why isn't 1NT-2NT-3NT a sensible auction??? That being said, some of the bidding is totally unrealistic since the opponents never bid even when they have easy overcalls to make. On one board, LHO has ♥AKJxxxxx and quietly passed over 1NT. Correct decision as declarer had ♥Qx and hearts easily ran.

The scoring system is 10 points for making 3NT, 1 point for each overtrick, -1 point for each undertrick. Something like a very simplified IMP scale with no adjustment for vulnerability.