[Stevenator]

The very first hand in his week's "Quest for 100%" by Hanoi Rondon is a classic example of manipuilating the robots by making illegal and misleading bids which would NEVER stand up in a club Game or Tournament. The Director(s) would be summonded on virtually every hand. For example, Mr. Rondon opens the first hand 1 Spade in South holding two small spades!!! As it turns out, the robots have an 11-card Spade fit and can make 4 Spades, scoring 60% for the defenders. Mr. Rondon keeps E/W out of their Spade contract. When North doubles West's 2 Diamond overcall, the double is left in and goes down "for....one...hundred...percent." So, what are we learning about Bridge? Nothing!!! We are just manipulating the robots with bids which would get you banned from most clubs and tournaments. SAs such, while somewhat entertaining at first, this column is useless and a waste of space on BBO. BRING BACK PETER HOLLANDS!!! His videos are great for learning to play bridge properly. Another effect of Mr. Rondon's videos is that the weekly leaderboard for the Weekly Free Instant Tournament is obviously corrupted and many people are simply following the videos to get on the leaderboard. It is one thing to play the free tournament over and over to learn and get better and better scores, but Mr. Rondon'e videos are are not helping to promote the "honest" game of Bridge.

[smerriman]

 Stevenator, on 2023-September-14, 15:29, said:

Another effect of Mr. Rondon's videos is that the weekly leaderboard for the Weekly Free Instant Tournament is obviously corrupted and many people are simply following the videos to get on the leaderboard.

This is incorrect. Instant Tournaments work by taking a random selection of humans who played in an old robot tournament, and then comparing your scores to them. Those people on the leaderboard do not change; they were not playing the Weekly Free tournament, nor were they able to see the hands in advance or play the hands more than once.

Yes, these videos are completely unrelated to bridge, but that's the entire point.

As for Peter, he hasn't gone anywhere.. he's still playing the weekly free every week.

[barmar]

And don't forget that you can play the weekly free instant tournament multiple times, so you can easily cheat on them. But you're only cheating yourself, since no one else is being compared to you.

[harikannan]

I think the OP meant the recent introduction of leaderboard, where people can try multiple times for 100% score on the same 8 boards of weekly free instant tournament and comparison is not with the actual players of the original tournament, but with the rest of us who play the weekly.

[pilowsky]

 smerriman, on 2023-September-14, 16:12, said:

As for Peter, he hasn't gone anywhere.. he's still playing the weekly free every week.

It would be nice if there was a "Streamers" tab on the site so users could see a record of who's out there and when they're live.

[cherdano]

When I saw the title of the post, I knew I would enjoy it, and it did not disappoint!