Next: 4.2 The convention card Up: 4 The GIB display Previous: 4 The GIB display

4.1 The main screen

When you're playing GIB, there is basically a single screen that you will be interacting with. You'll switch to other screens on occasion (to change the settings on a convention card, for example), but you'll usually be working with the screen that shows the bidding, cards played, and so on. This is the main screen.

The main screen is broken into nine sections. Four of these simply display the hands of the four players at the table, North, East, South and West. Hands that are being played by GIB are labelled as such. The player whose turn it is to play is highlighted in yellow, and the highlight flashes if it's GIB's turn to play and GIB is thinking. If you ask GIB to show projections (in the action menu), each GIB player will report how well or poorly it expects to do on this deal.

If you ask GIB for a hint during the play, it will show you the hint by highlighting the card it would play blue. (You still have to play the card or not, of course; it's just a hint.) If you ask GIB to show you what it's thinking about, it will highlight cards pale yellow as it thinks. The yellow card is the one that GIB currently thinks is its best action.

In the middle of the screen is the playing area. This includes the bidding box and auction summary during the auction, and shows the cards played to the current trick during the play. During the auction, a hint made by GIB will be highlighted blue in the bidding box. If you ask GIB to show you what it's thinking, the bid it thinks is best will be highlighted in pale yellow. Alertable bids, which may not mean what you expect, are followed by a ! in the auction summary window.

The four remaining areas are the small spaces in the upper left, upper right, lower left and lower right. The lower right area is the simplest, and is used to display the characters you enter from the keyboard if you select a play or bid by typing instead of by clicking with the mouse.

The upper left region gives the status of the current deal. You're told here who the dealer is, who's vulnerable, and what the current contract is. GIB also tells you the form of scoring and gives information about the source of the deal here. And once the play begins, you're told how many tricks each side has taken.

The lower left region is used to report the score. In Chicago-style scoring, the cumulative N/S score is presented. In rubber bridge scoring, the cumulative score is presented. Each deal is entered separately, but when you move on to the next deal, the result of the previous one is amalgamated into the running totals.

Finally, some statistical information is presented in the upper right. If you identify yourself to GIB, it will collect information on how well you do on the tournament deals in the deal libraries (relative to the human experts who actually played those deals, in terms of IMPs/deal or matchpoint percentage), and how well you do on randomly generated deals (in terms of average points won or lost). GIB will tell you how well you did on the last deal, along with cumulative information for the current play session, the current day, and lifetime. The information presented will be for the same form of scoring as the current day.


Next: 4.2 The convention card Up: 4 The GIB display Previous: 4 The GIB display