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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
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Simple heuristic for improving basic GIB play
#2
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Posted 2012-June-15, 21:53
Along the same lines, when cashing from a choice of winners, GIB should first cash cards in suits in which the opp(s) are void, to apply pressure that might result in a bad discard by opps who are not playing double dummy.
#3
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Posted 2012-June-15, 22:40
Now you're making it complicated 
#4
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Posted 2012-June-16, 07:41
i dont understand why GIB went down. if you cash AJ♥ then finess ♣
you have 2♠4♥4♦2♣ for 12 easy tricks.
GIB seems to have blocked the ♥ suit and not maintained a board entry
you have 2♠4♥4♦2♣ for 12 easy tricks.
GIB seems to have blocked the ♥ suit and not maintained a board entry
Sarcasm is a state of mind
#5
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Posted 2012-June-16, 13:27
steve2005, on 2012-June-16, 07:41, said:
i dont understand why GIB went down. if you cash AJ♥ then finess ♣
you have 2♠4♥4♦2♣ for 12 easy tricks.
GIB seems to have blocked the ♥ suit and not maintained a board entry
you have 2♠4♥4♦2♣ 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
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