[DrFell]

I have a small group that I play with regularly, and we often need one robot to complete a table. I imagine this is a relatively unusual use pattern, with either 2 or 3 robots being more common. I want to raise a couple of issues which impair this particular experience.



1. The new "human declarer" policy works well for 3-robot tables, and has no effect on 2-robot tables (assuming the humans play as partners). But it is less satisfactory for us, since the player partnering the robot gets no natural breaks. There is value to sometimes being dummy when you're playing with other people.

It would be nice to be able to toggle this in the table options. But since BBO has chosen not to offer that, my alternative suggestion is that tables created via the "new table with 3 robots" button should continue to default to human declarer, but that tables created via the general "new table" button should default to robot declarer.



2. I have raised this one before, but I do so again. BBO can be temperamental about connections, and I get DC'ed fairly frequently. If the player with the robots gets booted off, it's a considerable faff to get things restarted, because both the other players have to leave the table, so that the one with robots can be "king". Then they both have to be invited back again.

My suggestion (made here before) is that the "king" should be able to install robots if *any* of the players present have hired them.

[pilowsky]

I agree with the toggle idea.
When I suggested (along with others I'm sure) that people in the Prime Club could have the ability to play the hand when their side won the auction, I specifically asked for this to something that could be toggled.
I know both are possible because there is an ACBL robot tournament which is not human declares called 'Classic'.

Possibly a 'toggle' is too hard for the programmers to implement. I have a limited imagination, so I am unable to understand why this is the case.