RossSCann

Pin money. My program is BridgeMentor free download trial from my site www.bridgegame.com Teaching program for beginners. Several hundred thousand lines of bid and play help txt. The single dummy solver is a function called for a certain class of NT hands. It was created to deal with a Frank Stewart newspaper column hand. My logic uses hundreds of Frank Stewart columns with changes to avoid any copyright issues. He is a good source of stuff for beginners. Lots of Eddie Kantar hands as well froom his books. This is a retirement hobby work in progress. However, thousands of copies sold over the years from the free trial. Fred Gittleman once emailed me that he liked the program. But it is just a hobby project. The problem of dealing with any random hand with good play and help text is a lot of work. I have looked at and coded for more than 10,000 hands, a drop in the bucket of the 10 to the 27th possible.

Thanks, How did you direct output away from the screen to file(s). That is what I would need, plus file input of the hands, of course. Ross No longer a problem. I now have the Haglund double doummy dll working great. Nice code. I will use standard opening leads immediately follwed by his analysis. I expect to prune his search a lot for speed, eliminating outcomes of no interest for my purposes.

Thanks. No I don't have any intentions to sell my program if I can get it working in a useful fashion to provide really good analysis of bid questios with a really easy to use GUI. I would post it for free download on my web site if there is interest. I downloaded his dll and was pleased to have it compile immediately with only one name space conflict, which is amazing since I have more tha 3000 variable/function names, all bridge related.

Thanks Stephen, I really did not want to do the work myself. I have done a single dummy function which is limited to NT contracts of a certain class and it was hard to do. It finds a can't be defeated line of play to make the contract against any lie of the cards. It is in my program but very seldom comes up in random hands. I really don't like it because the help text for the user is not informative. "Play this card now or the defense may defeat your contract." Especially when it is the card to be played from dummy on the opening lead. Really especially when that card is not a likely choice. Have you ever evaluated Haglund's executable? I assume you think it is good by your reference to it. What other source code projects, if any, do you know of in this domain? i.e. Line of play % evaluation using simulation against all possible lies of the cards, based on bidding, for example? i.e. Brute force Monte Carlo simulation analysis. If this isn't available I will have to do it since we now have massively parallel multi-threading available to deal with the combinatorial explosion problem. Best, Ross

Any one here know of open source projects for C/C++ for single or double dummy play (not bidding). I doubt there is any hope for single-dummy because if it's any good it is worth a lot of money. I have written one and it is making money. Double dummy however, must be available somewhere because it has no significant commercial value. I don't want to write my own if I can avoid it. I need this for my project to build a good program to analyze alternative bid panel questions which I have discussed in another thread in this forum. I also now realize I can use it to improve my existing single-dummy logic.

Yes, 16 cases out 500 have 5 Clubs. I wiil look at those. I don't care if anyone else uses my program, I am interested in competing with others interested in this development issue. The idea that bid decisions in the panels in the Bulletin are scored by "informed judgement" strikes me as nonsense, for want of a better means. But then I was trained as a scientist. I will try to get source code for GIB to be used only for non-comercial purposes.

Maybe some contact can gin up a version of GIB that will run from a file N hands, per any file format GIB wants, and print results to a text file. This is really probably very simple to code if they have decent function architecture. Or maybe they would realease source code.

I don't expect my program to stand up well against professional products. I am an 80 year old programming hobbyist and low intermediate level bridge player. However, on large samples my program might yield similar results in total because of 2nd rate declarer play facing 2nd rate defense. Dealing with random deals on a single dummy basis is really hard programming. Nobody is ever going to write code capable of expert play because the effort that would be required can'r be justified on a cost/benefit basis. A DeepFineese approach using standard opening leads might work, however as a more accurate equivalent of expert play. My program has 280,000 lines of C++ code dealing single dummy play and that is just scratching the surface of what would be needed for advamced play/defense. I wonder if any of the commercial programs have the facility to play an input file of N hands and print summary results? If you do get the time to run your challenge match you should publish it here. If anyone has a contact with one or more of the commercial programs you should ask them to make available a version that can run from an input file of N hands and print the results. The coding to do this would be trivial. There would be no reason to incorporate such a feature in their commercial product, but they could put the version on their web site if they are not afraid of the competition. They could even do it as a console app for simplicity, with no other capability than running the file of N hands and displaying results.

By ease od input I do mean as simple as possible GUI. I certainly agree my program has play problems. What is the best single dummy play program available today. I will buy it and test it against my results. It may not be much different than my results but we have to test it to see. Thanks for the instruction on formatting spaces.

As everyone agrees opening leads are hard. My logic has around 500 different leads based on the bidding and West's hand (S is decl). I got almost all of them from books on defense, Root, Kantar, etc. I would guess that is 20% of what would be required to equal the leads made by an expert. However, as noted above, double-dummy opening leads would not make sense in determining how a given hand plays out. On the other hand my 500 probably covers more than 80% of all random deals. I would love it if some experts would go through the random deals my program generates and see which opening leads they disagree with. Also, my posting of details is coming out very messy because the fromating is getting garbled. I have to learn how to maintain the formating when adding to this forum.

All the final contracts after the 2H rebid by responder are 2H's or 2S's. Obviously after pass all the contracts are 1 NT. I will post details of all the results per the cloud suggestion above. I hope to develop my program into a useful tool for analysis if I can, so contructive review will be very helpful. As far as I can tell no such tool now exists with easy user input of the bidding question to be analyzed. One big question I have is whether to just use the play and defense logic in my program, or get something like "Deep Finesse," which considers the hidden cards.

Good suggestions. I didn't know about the free cloud posting sites. I do have all the data you suggest re: distribution and tricks taken, etc. The bidding is set to that which Frank Stewart uses for his colum i.e. simple. For example 1 NT opening 16-18 HCPts. This is a work in progress so I am anxious for constructive criticism.

A couple of months ago I posted the bidding question below from Frank Stewart's daily column I am modifying my bridge program to analyze alternative bids for 500 random deals; At the time it seemed to me (low intermediate player) that the best bid would be to pass I ran an analysis that confirmed my thought. A number of readers protested, some violently, saying everyone knows you bid 2 H's Well, there was a bug in my program. After various distractions I have gotten back to the issue, with the following new results. 2 H's wins by a small amount at MP's. [hv=pc=n&s=sjt652hqjt9d7ck42&d=n&v=0&b=1&a=1dp1sp1np]133|200[/hv] Alternative rebids by South are 2 H's or Pass Total Score Top Boards Key bid 1 2H 2228 240 Key bid 2 Pass 3846 228 Flat boards 32 Distribution of High Card Points For North - Number of Hands 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 0 128 498 274 78 22 If anyone wants to look at any of the 500 random hands I can email a file. I am interested in the topic of analyzing alternative bids by generating a large number of random hands to see the result. Results for 500 good cases for another run w/ more detail Dealer N opens 1 D and S responds 1 S, N now bids 1 Nt: Key bids are 2 H's or Pass Total Score Top Boards Key bid 1 2H 2860 249 Key bid 2 Pass 3900 217 Flat boards 34 Distribution of High Card Points For North - Number of Hands 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 0 122 514 269 74 23 Distribution of Imps Won - Number of Boards Imps 2H Pass 1 98 25 2 54 7 3 14 8 4 0 0 5 33 39 6 17 35 7 14 26 8 8 14 9 4 6 10 4 3 11 2 1 12 1 0 13 0 0 14 0 0 Total 787 857 Contracts Reached After Bid Choice One 2H Declarer Bid Suit Made Cases South 2 Heart 2 91 South 2 Spade 2 84 South 2 Spade -1 62 South 2 Heart 3 60 South 2 Spade 3 53 South 2 Heart -1 51 South 2 Spade -2 31 South 2 Heart -2 21 South 2 Heart 4 13 South 2 Spade -3 10 South 2 Spade 4 7 South 2 Heart 5 4 South 2 Heart -3 3 South 2 Heart -4 2 North 3 Notrump 3 2 North 3 Notrump -1 1 South 2 Spade -5 1 North 3 Notrump 5 1 North 2 Notrump 3 1 North 2 Notrump -1 1 North 2 Notrump 2 1 Contracts Reached After Bid Choice Two Pass Declarer Bid Suit Made Cases North 1 Notrump 1 179 North 1 Notrump 2 109 North 1 Notrump -1 94 North 1 Notrump 3 55 North 1 Notrump -2 36 North 1 Notrump 4 13 North 1 Notrump -3 9 North 1 Notrump -4 2 North 1 Notrump 5 2 North 1 Notrump -6 1 Distribution of North Hands Number of Cases Spades Hearts Diamonds Clubs 85 3 3 4 3 71 2 3 5 3 64 2 4 4 3 43 2 3 4 4 40 2 4 5 2 31 3 3 5 2 26 3 2 5 3 24 3 2 4 4 23 3 4 4 2 22 1 4 4 4 14 2 2 5 4 13 2 2 4 5 10 4 3 4 2 8 1 4 5 3 6 4 4 3 2 5 1 3 5 4 5 4 2 4 3 4 1 3 4 5 4 4 2 5 2 2 1 2 5 5

I downloaded and extracted but it wouldn't work. It said it was missing a .dll but that dll was clearly present. It is unfortnately written in some obscure script language. We should be working in C++. Ross

Yes, I agree. There were definite problems with my logic in this sequence which I am fixing.

Yes, that is what the book teaches.

Yes, there is a problem in my bidding logic with this sequence that I have to fix. Also I have to do a lot of coding to present results in a clear format that allows for easy review of the validity of the program's bidding and play result for each of the generated random deals. I don't have a published source for the criteria N uses to pass @ H or correct to 2 S's, so I will experiment with that.

Yes, I have a definite problem with my bidding which I will fix and then rerun the analysis. Also I need to do a lot of coding to present the results in a nice format that lends itself to review as to the correctness of the bidding and play. I haven't found a published source so far on the criteria for N to choose pass or correct to 2 ♠. Therefore I will just use the simulation to see what is best, before retesting against S passing 1 NT.

My program knows it is not forcing and N is free to pass as a preference with much better H's than S's and a dead minimum open.

I am writing a bidding question evaluation program to test alternate bidding decisions using a bridge teaching program that I offer for free trial on the net at www.bridgegame.com This program is aimed at beginners primarily, but it's bidding and play is intermediate level. I have an active thread going now in this forum over the accuracy of my program's results. My program version on the net doesn't have this simulation feature at this point. My program works by entering the S cards and the bidding up to the point of the bids in question, which are always made by S. Two alternate bids are entered as the question in point. The program runs 500 random cases simulating each of the two bidding alternatives. The play is not double dummy because I don't need double duumy play for teaching. I am trying to find sources of results of similar analysis that I can test the results of my simulations against.

I would be happy to email you my results. When you say people do you mean interrmediate players? N would raise to 2 S's with 3 to A or K. I am using the book "Standard Bidding with SAYC" for much of the bidding in the program, which has that agreement. We are talking about intermediate bidding and play here.

I appreciate your interest and I will send you the file with all 500. You can look at any you wish. Best, Ross

I am just an interrmediate player and as I said it's just a hobby. The program has sold thousands of copies however. I never spent much time at all on the tutorials, which are indended for absolute novices.

By "random" I mean hands for W N & E of equal probablitiy of occurence that agree with the bidding. i.e points and card length. So the 500 hands are therefore representative of hands that would occur in actual play. You see the distribution of HCP's above for N. Also we know N doesn't have 4 spades or 6 fiamonds, etc. Neither E or W has a hand that warrants and overcall.

I read Frank Stewart's column and bidding question every day. Recently he gave an answer I was sure was wrong. I happen to have been writing a bridge teaching program as a retirement hobby for the past 20 years. I realized I could test the issue with my program. Given the specified hand for South, I could generate a large number of random distributions for the cards in the other three hands to see the outcome for each of two different bids by South. Here is the case: South holds S's J 10 6 5 2 H's Q J 10 9 D's 7 C's K 4 2 Dealer N opens 1 D, S responds 1 S, N now bids 1 NT: Question is what S bids next. Frank said no question, bid 2 H's I would pass in an instant with my weak 7 HCPs. So I ran 500 random cases with my program and the results were not even close. Pass had 337 tops 2 H's 121 " 42 flat I sent Frank the results and he cordially declined to believe my analysis. I offered to send him the 500 hands but he doesn't have time to look at them. My bigger question now is hasn't anybody else ever created an analytical tool like this to get definitive answers on bidding questons??? The bridge bulletins, columns etc. are loaded with such bidding questions. Are pundits just guessing the anwers?? Does anyone here know of such a tool?? Does anyone know of an example where such a bidding question was answered by actually looking at a large sample of random hands relevant to the bids in question and going through the probably bidding and play? You can look at my program at www.bridgegame.com if you like. I hope my questions ring some bells here. This seems to me to be an important theoretical issue. Here is more detail from a rerun. Results for 500 random cases Dealer N opens 1 D and S responds 1 S, N now bids 1 Nt: Key bids are 2 H's or Pass Total Score Top Boards Key bid 1 2H -5294 135 Key bid 2 Pass 4964 332 Flat boards 33 Distribution of High Card Points For North - Number of Hands 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 0 118 484 258 121 20 0 Distribution of Imps Won - Number of Boards Imps 2H Pass 1 31 9 2 28 3 3 8 32 4 0 0 5 2 71 6 3 43 7 5 67 8 5 34 9 2 36 10 25 12 11 21 11 12 4 2 13 1 0 14 0 0 Total 774 2099 Contracts Reached After Bid Choice One 2H Declarer Bid Suit Made Cases North 3 Notrump -1 46 North 3 Notrump -2 41 South 3 Heart 3 35 North 3 Notrump 3 33 South 3 Heart -2 28 South 3 Heart -1 23 South 4 Heart -2 22 North 2 Notrump -1 21 South 2 Spade 2 19 North 3 Notrump -4 15 South 3 Heart -3 15 North 3 Notrump -3 15 North 3 Diamond -2 14 North 2 Notrump 2 13 South 4 Heart -1 12 South 4 Heart -3 12 North 2 Notrump -2 11 South 3 Heart 4 11 South 4 Heart 4 11 North 3 Club -2 10 North 3 Club 3 9 North 3 Diamond -4 9 North 3 Diamond -1 8 South 2 Spade -1 7 South 2 Spade -2 7 North 2 Notrump -3 6 South 2 Spade 3 6 North 3 Notrump 4 5 North 3 Diamond -3 5 South 3 Heart -4 5 North 2 Notrump 4 4 North 2 Notrump 3 3 North 3 Club 4 3 North 3 Club -1 2 North 3 Diamond 3 2 North 3 Notrump -5 2 North 3 Diamond -6 2 South 3 Heart 5 1 North 3 Diamond 4 1 North 2 Notrump -5 1 North 3 Club -3 1 North 3 Diamond -5 1 South 2 Spade -3 1 South 4 Heart -4 1 North 3 Club -4 1 Contracts Reached After Bid Choice Two Pass Declarer Bid Suit Made Cases North 1 Notrump 1 197 North 1 Notrump 2 112 North 1 Notrump -1 69 North 1 Notrump 3 62 North 1 Notrump -2 32 North 1 Notrump 4 13 North 1 Notrump -3 8 North 1 Notrump -4 5 North 1 Notrump -5 1 North 1 Notrump 5 1 Distribution of North Hands Number of Cases Spades Hearts Diamonds Clubs 80 3 3 4 3 75 2 3 5 3 69 2 4 4 3 51 2 3 4 4 37 2 4 5 2 30 3 3 5 2 25 3 2 5 3 22 3 4 4 2 21 3 2 4 4 20 1 4 4 4 14 2 2 5 4 12 2 2 4 5 10 4 3 4 2 8 1 4 5 3 6 4 4 3 2 5 1 3 5 4 5 4 2 4 3 4 1 3 4 5 4 4 2 5 2 2 1 2 5 5