Conditions of Contest

Used Equipment - I will be using two 2.5 Ghz, Quad Core laptops, with 8 Gigabytes of ram for this event. More details will be explained below, and the origens of the equipment will be in the section Other Equipment Used. The laptops are stand alone. The matches will require some manual help for the opposing bots to be able to bid and play. This will be explained below. The completed PBN files from the games played will verified through the Jack 6.11 bridge robot first, and then through Bridge Composer 5.98 to create LIN files for showing the games played. They are run through Jack first because Jack has the ability to turn a PBN 2.1 or 2.0 file back to PBN 1.0 after the file is exported with Jack, which is then readable by all the bots. Due to scoring,Zone and seat changing issues, the new scoring will be automated NetBridgeVu via Bridge Composer, to avoid spreadsheet and user error. This will be created by the completed LIN file through NetBridgeVu. More details about the scoring below.

Set Up - I am still going to have rounds of 16 boards per match. So 8 boards Open and Closed room to make up the 16 boards. The stand alone games are achieved by have two of the seats switched to human on each bot. I have to tell one bot what the other one has done for the bidding and the play. The other two seats are automated by the bots being used, but the peaking of hands must be switched off in each bot to comply with the Blue Chip Protocol. This has already been tested, and all robots have managed to stay within the time limits. The Semi-Final and Final will also be 16 Boards. The Round Robin stage was scrapped this year after discovering scoring and zonal issues before the original tournament was scrapped in August. I have only run a very quick tournament from the Quarter Finals due to test an an automated scoring. The small amount of boards is due to the lack of Table Manger in the games. The Semi Finals, and the Final will be held on the same day .
There will be no Carry Over like they use at the official World Computer Bridge Championships. I believe that a robot playing another robot with accurate information input for the systems and conventions, and the same Jump Shift values must be able to understand the bidding of the opponent robot without human intervention, unlike at the Official World Computer Bridge Championships, where they are allowed to transfer convention information to add to their bots via the Table Manager Controller. I have achieved this in most cases, however because some of the bridge robots do not like certain styles of bidding systems for system matching. The bidding system and conventions will be matched, as long as that the opposing robot can accomodate them. The bidding system details with the chosen conventions will be added to both bots before a match. Jump Shift bidding point differences which cannot be altered in some cases without affecting some robots performance badly. This has been tested by checking the alert info of the bridge robots bidding. Very few alerts or misunderstangs are appearing during bidding. Of course, I have to check the bidding by sight for the Stand Alone games, to make sure a bot isn't disadvantaged.

Board Generation - The boards will be generated by Bridge Composer 5.98 for all of the robots, but then will be run through Jack 6.11, to bring the PBN 2.1 files back to PBN 1.0, for some of the older bots that can't read PBN 2.0 or 2.1. I will be doing a seat change at the half way stage of a match for 2023, to mimic Open and Closed Room competition. This is done so that the North South and the East West cards will be played by both robots during a match.

Robot Settings - The peaking mode of all the robots is switched off throughout the event, and two of the seats in each bot are set to human, so that i can input the bid and play from the each bot. Due to the robots needing to understand the bidding and conventions of the opponent robot. The bridge robots bidding system and conventions are matched, providing that the opposing robot has the system or conventions in their setup. Certain conventions can be turned off providing the convention is not an integral part of that bidding system. The differences may include the different strands of Standard American bidding for example, that also needs to be checked by sight to avoid bidding misunderstanding. The systems and conventions used must comply with the ACBL list used at the World Computer Bridge Championships, see link http://www.allevybridge.com/allevy/computerbridge/WCBC_coc.html . Robots will be set to play to Team IMP scoring, from there the Victory Points will be calculated. I have talked with the robot authors about some of the bidding issues and Jump Shift matching,as they know there robot's settings better than myself. This is to achieve as fair competition as possible.

Time Limit Of Play- The time limit for play will be 4 minutes per board or 16 boards in 64 minutes. This is in line with the ACBL guidelines for the World Computer Bridge Championships. In testing this has been slightly slower for the stand alone games requiring human intervention. At the main event however the time taken is not slow enough to incur a time penalty as discussed in the ACBL Championship rules, or the rules for this event.

Scoring- Scoring will be Victory Points and Team IMP because of the Open and Closed Room set up.