Jump to content

Simple heuristic for improving basic GIB play


xeno123

Recommended Posts

I believe there is a simple heuristic that could avoid some of the basic robot's most egregious and irritating blunders.

 

Here's an example of the problem - at trick 8 in a 6NT contract, having already lost one trick, GIB plays a guaranteed loser for down one, when what would have been a winning play (cashing the diamonds) was available:

 

http://tinyurl.com/87zojnb

 

I'm assuming what was going on here was that in all its simulations GIB saw one down, and so it picked one of its losing plays at random. A simple heuristic that says play a known winner in that situation instead of a known loser would have fixed this.

 

An analogous (and even more irritating) situation happens in defense when GIB randomly discards a high card that would have been a winner. Here the heuristic should simply say that when choosing among discards with (apparently) equivalent outcomes in the simulation, discard the lowest of the available choices.

 

If I am correct in my analysis here, these are two easy fixes that would reduce blood pressure among basic-robot users!

 

Peter

Link to comment
Share on other sites

i dont understand why GIB went down. if you cash AJ then finess

you have 2442 for 12 easy tricks.

GIB seems to have blocked the suit and not maintained a board entry

 

Yes, there are 11 top tricks at the outset, and it's trivial to always establish another trick. It's basically a laydown. GIB just got its entries tangled up, but fixing that sort of error is much harder I suspect. (I assume the advanced robot would have no problem with this hand).

 

Peter

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

Loading...
×
×
  • Create New...