User:Ninram/sandbox

The NABC Robot Individual is a bridge championship for individuals contested over three days in conjunction with each of the American Contract Bridge League's (ACBL) three yearly North American Bridge Championships (NABC). The NABC Robot Individual is conducted on the Bridge Base Online (BBO) platform and has sometimes been advertised with the slogan, "Win an NABC title in your pajamas!" The unlimited winner is conferred an NABC title, but does not thereby qualify for the ACBL's highest rank of Grand Life Master.

History
The inaugural event was conducted on an experimental basis in conjunction with the Summer 2017 Toronto NABC and comprised four days of play. This was changed to three days for all subsequent events. The NABC Robot Individual was not held in Fall 2017, but has been contested in conjunction with all subsequent NABC's, including the cancelled 2020 NABC's previously scheduled for Columbus (Spring) and Montreal (Summer).

Format
The NABC Robot Individual is a three-day, three-session robot duplicate event. Each session comprises 24 boards and spans one calendar day (Eastern time). Each session is weighted equally with full carryover. The human player always sits South, with robots in the other three seats. The event is played best-hand style: no robot can hold more high-card points on any given hand than the human. The human declares whenever his or her side wins the contract. The event is scored by matchpoints, with a provisional leaderboard made available after each session. The robots play a modified Two-over-One system, with explanations of their calls (and their interpretations of the human's calls, including still-possible unmade calls) clickable during the hand. The robot's system notes and convention card are also available at all times.

Security
The NABC Robot Individual is considered virtually impregnable in terms of security. The event uses deal pools, with each deal duplicated a limited number of times. (In the 2020 Summer NABC Robot Individual, for any board played by an entrant, there was a <1.3% chance that any particular competitor also played the board.) An expert panel is authorized to conduct a manual review following each session. Its decisions are final. Josh Donn has written, "It is like a trillion times easier to cheat in a live event than in this event."

Reception
The inaugural NABC Robot Individual attracted 2428 players, a record not matched until it was shattered in Summer 2020 (3242 players, by far the most of any NABC title awarded to date including "Jeopardy James" Holzhauer, who finished 31st).

Some in the bridge community, particularly of the old school, have questioned the merit of robot bridge. However, the NABC Robot Individual consistently attracts a large number of world-class players, who hold it in high regard. Justin Lall has written, "Skill is just such a massive part of these tournaments...especially in cardplay...I have no doubt that in this format it is more likely that the best player will win than in something like the Platinum Pairs...A weak player literally has zero chance of lucking into a high placing in this. IMO, we might be going down the 'too much skill' hole." And Roger Lee has written, "It is not possible to be good at bridge but bad against the robots. It is not possible to be good against the robots but bad at bridge. They are equivalent skills...Being good at deduction, deception, logical inferences, general cardplay technique, and having good overall bidding judgment are not just 'part' of the robot game, it is basically the entirety of the game...The sheer density of decisions you have to make as the best-hand holder in a punishing format like matchpoints means that someone who consistently makes better decisions will do better in the event...If robot bridge was the standard way to play bridge, people would ask: how can you award a national title in a form of bridge where one fourth of the time you do not play cards at all?"

Winners and Runners-Up
