[Scarabin]

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Today's deal is a simple squeeze and all 4 of our robots bid and made a 4 Spades contract, except that : _____________________________________________________ ________________________________________________ (1) 1 robot would have preferred to play in 3 No Trump (alerted as a strength showing raise) and 1 robot exchanged cue-bids in Clubs and Diamonds before settling in 4 Spades.
(2) A good result for robot play: they played the deal twice and all faultlessly executed the squeeze, both times. __________________Except that I had intended to add a new robot (also a monte carlo simulation) to our team and unaccountably it went down on the first four rounds: opening lead ♥K, then ♥A, then ♥J which Dummy failed to cover, then ♥10 ruffed by East with the ♠2 and on which Declarer discarded the ♣3. _____________ ________ __________________ __ As a tentative conclusion it seems that the complexity of the problem in human terms may not be a factor in a robot's success or failure, and we should be careful not to ascribe human attributes to robots. This is a human failing, have you ever caught yourself apologising to your computer when you miss-key? I have.

[inquiry]

After the heart akj, east ruffing, there is no other play than the simple squeeze. it is no surprise that all the robots played this one correctly, the only simulations that will ever work are ones that result in the simple squeeze against west.

The thing about this type of hand, is not that the robot finds the simple squeeze. It is when the hand is slightly different (move the club five to east and the diamond 2 to west) how frequently the east robot will either discard a club, or play his club Ten on an early round for no good reason, both of which would isolate the club threat with west. GIB's tendency to waste high cards (i am including the ten as a high card in this discussion) is quite bothersome. It is true, Gib and jack both make some very nice unblocking plays when needed, but the costly unneeded unblocks are just plain crazy. I have more experience playing with gib.... and reviewing gib play.

[Scarabin]

inquiry, on 2012-January-28, 15:02, said:

After the heart akj, east ruffing, there is no other play than the simple squeeze. it is no surprise that all the robots played this one correctly, the only simulations that will ever work are ones that result in the simple squeeze against west.

The thing about this type of hand, is not that the robot finds the simple squeeze. It is when the hand is slightly different (move the club five to east and the diamond 2 to west) how frequently the east robot will either discard a club, or play his club Ten on an early round for no good reason, both of which would isolate the club threat with west. GIB's tendency to waste high cards (i am including the ten as a high card in this discussion) is quite bothersome. It is true, Gib and jack both make some very nice unblocking plays when needed, but the costly unneeded unblocks are just plain crazy. I have more experience playing with gib.... and reviewing gib play.

Being human I tend to class a squeeze as more difficult than a ducking play and the point I want to make is that the simulations are designed to by-pass logical difficulties and bring all problems to the same level. Would you agree?

I share your frustration with robot defenders discarding key cards when free of any pressure to do so. I recently had Wbridge5 discard the ♣King from Kxxx when this was the key card.

[inquiry]

Scarabin, on 2012-January-29, 20:53, said:

Being human I tend to class a squeeze as more difficult than a ducking play and the point I want to make is that the simulations are designed to by-pass logical difficulties and bring all problems to the same level. Would you agree?

I am not sure I agree, only because I don't understand what you mean by "designed to bypass logical difficulties".

[Scarabin]

inquiry, on 2012-January-30, 19:30, said:

I am not sure I agree, only because I don't understand what you mean by "designed to bypass logical difficulties".

What I am trying to say is that random simulations of the unseen hands are designed to put the robot in the position of playing double dummy (and then counting up how many times the card chosen appears in the other simulations).

Playing double dummy there is no question of the robot recognising hand patterns or possible strategies, the only question asked (and answered by brute force analysis) is "If I play this card how many tricks will I win?"

The human player on the other hand (if he is anything like me) goes through all sorts of logical difficulties and tries to apply pragmatic reasoning backed by known probabilities?

[CarlRitner]

I find a squeeze play harder than an endplay.
The robots do not find any play difficult or easy; they either find them (via simulation) or they do not find them.

[Scarabin]

CarlRitner, on 2012-August-19, 12:10, said:

I find a squeeze play harder than an endplay.
The robots do not find any play difficult or easy; they either find them (via simulation) or they do not find them.

But, on a subjective basis of limited observation, the robots seem unlikely to "find" plays that involve combining chances, and in end plays seem to find squeezes more frequently than throw-ins.

[CarlRitner]

I can't properly state a logical reason why, but I think you are correct about combining chances.

[Scarabin]

Unfortunately I have discovered a flaw in my approach. I've been using tuition software as my source for examples, and relying, naively, on the author's analysis. However some examples require help from the enemy: defensive errors.

This does not affect the original purpose of the software but mean it's not a good standard for evaluating robot play. Oh well, back to the drawing board.

Slainte,

Ian