Bridge by NeuralPlay 4+

Random Deal seems to be broken

The frequency of 9 or 10 high hands being dealt to South is well beyond statistical probability. For example, in the last 5 hands I was dealt, 3 hands were 9 high with even distribution, 1 hand had a single Jack with even distribution, and the 5th hand was about 5 points again with even distribution. Without keeping detailed records, I feel 70-80 percent of South hands are 9 or 10 high. It is disappointing to play a myriad of hands where your only bid is “pass” and no defense can be offered when you can only catch the cards you hold.

Beware that the program uses a strange 4NT bid by North. Following a pass by South, a bid by West. North will overcall 4NT to indicate 2 4-card suits for the lowest suits that have not been bid and North usually has only 3-5 points. The bid is doubled. So with with South having a high hand with no honors, and North having so few points, declarers often capture only one or two tricks. I have not found a way to avoid this disaster.

Additionally, be prepared for North to discard winning Aces and Kings or overtake your winning trick permitting opponents to set up their suit. This occurs despite the lead being from dummy when it is obvious what cards to hold. Often, North will discard Ace or King while continuing to hold 3 small cards in the same suit. North is not unblocking hand for South because never has much of a chance to catch a trick when mostly holding 10-high hands!

Developer Response ,

Thank you for your review. The deals are random by default, south will get good hands too. We often use the Hand Characteristics settings to give south better hands for practice.

The AI by default uses Unusual Notrump bids, the 4NT overcall bid is an Unusual Notrump preemptive overall showing the two lower unbid suits. This bidding convention may be customized in settings.

Excellent Game

I am no expert but this app plays a very credible game. I have won 48% of hands played on level 5 and 6, but the app counts ties as wins so I’m doing worse than that. I have played 600 hands and have not noticed reneges or anything completely “wrong”. Bots may bid or play unexpectedly but that’s what people do too. What makes bridge great is that there are times where there’s no obvious move.

I will say the bot’s SAYC bidding is pretty good (I don’t know all the conventions myself), but the card play seems a little weak. I’m now playing level 6 all the time and I don’t think I’ve ever seen the bot duck a trick even when it’s pretty clear it should. It seems finesses lose more than they should because second hand seems to play high whenever possible.

Every dice or card game app I’ve ever seen get reviews accusing the app of rigging the randomness. Generally speaking, why would a developer put in effort like that to make an inferior product that makes people mad? The beauty of bridge is that you can play duplicate and randomness is not a factor. Sometimes my “teammates” make dumb plays on the other table, but that’s real life too.

Overall excellent, a few minor things

I play with the hints on and am surprised at how often it prompts me to play trump unnecessarily. But my bidding is improving significantly. Lately I’ve been super-focused on bidding. Some things I’d love to see as options: Force the final bid to a particular point - for example a 4s that I really wanted to replay as 3nt. Sometimes I can redo the bidding and trick it, but not always. Bid and then just display all the hands. Preference deals to favor majors, minors, or nt. Also, would love to see what you guys could do with a cribbage game. :)

Edit - d’oh. Scroll down and there’s bidding practice that already does one of the things I wanted. It’s like you read my mind! I’m serious about wanting you guys to do cribbage, though. :)

Developer Response ,

Glad to hear you are enjoying NeuralPlay Bridge. Thank you for your review.

The AI uses a Monte Carlo Simulation algorithm to choose this plays. This results in some unnecessary trump leads, but most of the time it will not give a way a trick. If you see a case where it bad, please send us, support@neuralplay.com, the PBN file with Menu - Share Hand. We are working on improvements and examples of mis-plays are very helpful.

Thank you for the helpful suggestions. We will look into them. The force a particular final bid is on our list to do. You can do this currently with some trouble. For example, by trying to trick the bidding as you mentioned. You may be able use the Settings - Play as direction to do this too. We will try to make this easier.

The preference deals to majors/minors, and NT feature, we have as the Settings - Custom dealing. You can choose NT hands, strong two hands, etc. We not have all the majors/minors settings yet. We will look into adding them. Thank you for the helpful suggestions.

And thank you for the Cribbage suggestion too. On our list.