Man vs Machine & Machine vs Machine      2024

About Man vs Machine

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.

Zia Mahmood won the competition.

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.

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.

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

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/

This version of Man vs Machine consists of two parts:

Part 1) The Man plays 8 challenges matches versus the bots. This parts is not a competition. It will show how well the bots manage versus a very good human player.

Part 2) A Machine vs Machine pair competition between 6 bots. The challenge setup and scoring will be used, the challenge pair will be a pair with same bots. First a a round robin is played. Then it will be a playoff, semifinals and Final. 

The Man

The Man will be Björn Wenneberg, a Swedish elite player. Among his succese 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 13.40 (beta version) by Tomio and Yumiko Uchida   (only included in part 1)                                                           - WBridge 5.12 by Yves Costel                                                                                                                                                                    - GIB 6.20 by Matthew L. Ginsberg                                                                                                                                                              - PowerShark 2024 (build 1.03.328) by John and Merete Vermehren Norris                                                                                      - Lia 0.12.4 by Luc Bellicaud (bidding Lia and card play Ben)                                                                                                                - Ben 0.2  by Lorand Dali and further developed by Thorvald Aagaart

Online:

- FunBridge Argine by Alexis Maugat and Jerome Rombaut

 Setup of the Play

The Challenge (Team play) format is used.

At Table 1 the Man 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 same setup is used for Part 2 with the difference that a bot pair is playing NS at Table 1.

The following bots supports play in Table Manager: GIB, WBridge5, PowerShark 2024, Ben, Lia and Q-Plus Bridge.

The match versus Micro Bridge in Part 1, is played in the program.

T he match versus FunBridge is played by using the Challenge interface on FunBridge.

FunBridge Argine are not included in Part 2 as the authors has not provided setup for play vs other bots in TM.

The number of boards in the Part 1 matches: 16 The number of boards in the Part 2 Round Robin: 64 * The number of boards in the Part 2 Semifinals* and Final: 128 Type of boards: Random - generated by BridgeComposer Scoring: IMP and VP

*) The same boards will be played in all matches.

Scoring: IMP and VP

The event consists of 8 rounds.

The matches start 15/4, end date not decided

All Part 1 matches will be video recorded with the NetBridgeVu interface and the Semifinals and Final in Part 2. The videos will be published on YouTube. 

                                                         Match Results 04-29

                                                                   VuGraph video with Match 1           

                                                                            Summary Score

                           All other details about the event are available in the Condition of Contest.