Man vs Machine 2024
Man vs Machine 2024 is a remake of the famous event in 1999 with Zia Mahmood as the Man playing against 7 bots; GIB, Micro Bridge, Blue Chip, Meadowlark Bridge, Q-Plus Bridge, Oxford Bridge and Saitek Pro Bridge 510 (non PC based program). It was played as an individual competition with a team play setup. A special scoring was used.
This does not mean an arrangement exactly as it was at that time. Zia will not be the player, instead an Swedish elite player. Furthermore the format will not be same. Zia and 7 other bots played an individual competition with other scoring than will be used here.
Zia Mahmood won the competition.
The book about the event: Man vs Machine - The bridge match of the millenium, is available on Amazon: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Man-Vs-Machine-Bridge-Millennium/dp/1902123166
Today Micro Bridge’s development is frozen, but is still sold. Q-Plus Bridge is still sold and developed. GIB is used as Robot on BBO. Meadowlark Bridge is still developed.
In 2020 Björn Hjalmarsson, owner of computerbridge.se, ran a pilot of the Man vs Machine in a new format. The challenge (Team play) format was used, the same format that is used for Challenges on FunBridge and other online Bridge Sites. He played against nine Bots, six stand-alone and three online.
He won seven of the nine matches, lost only to WBridge5 and Q-Plus Bridge 15.3.
More details of the Event is available on this link: https://www.computerbridge.se/copy-of-cbe-project-20202/
The 2024 his version of Man vs Machine consists of two parts:
Part 1) The Man plays 8 challenges matches versus the bots. This part is not a competition. It will show how well the bots manage versus a very good human player.
Part 2) An individual competition including the Man and seven of the bots that can be played through Table Manager. The bots play challenge matches versus each other bots, using the same boards as in part one. FunBridge Argine will not be included.
Part 3) A Machine vs Machine competition between the seven bots.
The Man
The Man will be Björn Wenneberg, a Swedish elite player. Among his success is a win in the World Championship Pairs for Seniors in 2016. He’s representing Sweden in the Senior Teams in the 2024 European Championship.
Participating Bots
Stand-Alone:
- Q-Plus Bridge 15.7 by Johannes Leber
- Micro Bridge 13.30 by Tomio and Yumiko Uchida
- WBridge 5.12 by Yves Costel
- GIB 6.20 by Matthew L. Ginsberg
- Shark 4.0.6.1 by John and Merete Vermehren Norris
- Lia 0.12.4 by Luc Bellicaud (bidding Lia and card play Ben)
- Ben 0.2 (maybe it will be another version) by Lorand Dali and further developed by Thorvald Aagaart
One strong bot is missing, Jack, due to no support from the authors.
Online:
- FunBridge Argine by Alexis Maugat and Jerome Rombaut
Wins in the World Championship
GIB: 2
WBridge5: 7
Shark Bridge: 2
Micro Bridge: 1
Setup of the Play
The Challenge (Team play) format is used.
At Table 1 the Man or a bot is playing South with a bot as partner in Team A, versus a bot pair in Team B. At Table 2 the other bot pairs pairs in Team A and B play against each other. One differens compared how it’s implemented on Online Sites, when North will be declarer the board is not rotated so South will be declarer.
The following bots supports play in Table Manager: GIB, WBridge5, Shark Bridge, , Ben and Q-Plus Bridge. Setup of Micro Bridge for play in Table Manager has not been provided by the author. A special setup is used for matches between Micro Bridge and the other bots.
The match versus FunBridge is played by using the Challenger interface on FunBridge.
FunBridge Argine are not included in the Individual competition as the authors has not provided setup for play vs other bots in TM.
The number of boards in a match: 16 in Part 1 & 2 - 64 in Part 3. Type of boards: Random
Scoring: IMP and VP
For Part 3, Machine vs Machine, the same setup is used as in Part 1 and 2, but the number of boards are 64 instead of 16. The same boards will be used in all matches.
The competitions starts in Week 16 and ends latest in week 22.
There will be reports and video available after each weeks play.
Enjoy!
Björn Hjalmarsson
Owner www.computerbridge.se
Boken som Björn refererar till finns för ett betydligt bättre pris här.
Tack för info!
Är man intresserad av detaljerna så finns det en nästan färdig Condition of Contest:
Det har skett en del ändringar i setup sen den 4 april. Nu ser det ut så här lite kort:
Formatet Challenge (lagspel) används.
Del 1: Vid bord 1 spelar Björn Syd med en bot som partner i Lag A, mot ett botpar Öst-Väst i Lag B. Vid bord 2 spelar de andra botparen i lag A och B mot varandra.
Del 2:
Samma setup används för del 2 med skillnaden att ett botpar spelar NS vid bord 1 vs.
Mera detaljer finns i CoC: https://11c38132ee.clvaw-cdnwnd.com/0829453b7d8d4bed35ccf0e915179321/200000966-77ddf77de2/Man%20vs%20Machine%20CoC%202024-04-25-1-0.pdf?ph=11c38132ee
Info om spelade matcher, tabellställning och videos från spelet finns på
https://www.computerbridge.se/man-vs-machine-2024/
Nu finns en video från första matchen i Man vs Machine, Björn W vs WBridge5 https://youtu.be/x4vwJVkJmW8
Tack, kul att se men imponerande vore ett overstatement
Ytterligare två matcher har spelats i Man vs Machine:
Björn vs Q-Bridge Plus och Björn vs Micro Bridge.
Matcherna finns här:
Q-plus bjuder konstigt på två brickor och anledningen var att den version av SAYC som finns i Q-Plus är buggig. Hade jag vetat detta hade Björn fått använt ett annat system! T.ex. öppnar Q-Plus med 1 hjärter med 4-6 i hjärter och klöver, trots att SAYC är min 5 kort som gäller för högfärger. På en annan bricka bjöd nord 1NT som ett svar på en öppning av Björn på 15 hcp och Björn missade slammen. Den bjöds vid andra bordet, men gick bet. Q-Plus vid det andra bordet spelade det system som används i VM och där var budgivningen korrekt. Bra gjort av Björn att vinna trots han fick använda ett buggigt system!
Senaste stabila versionen av CoC
Match 4, Björn vs GIB, i Man vs Machine har spelats.
Resultat och video finns här
Det visade sig att det inte var några buggar i Q-Plus, det var jag som missat att konfigurera på ett ställe! Efter uppdatering bjöd Q-Plus normalt!
Match 5 och 6 i Man vs Machine har spelats och resultat och video finns här
Match 7 har spelats, Björn vs FunBridge Argine