[Scarabin]

Thanks Barmar,MrAce, and Antrax, for your insights. I guess we have pretty well established that we should not expect a rational approach from a robot. That said I think my peeve with robots is that I want to feel I have played against a human expert, someone who plays like me only better, and not against an idiot savant. I think that is the main point and how well it plays and if it cheats are secondary in importance.

Having said that I still want to verify Ginsberg's claims about how well GIB played the BridgeMaster deals, and to discover if GIB has weaknesses related to certain types of hands: my hypothesis would be these could include combining chances and choosing between alternative plays.

The possible alternative of trying to reproduce and examine how GIB's methods operate is just too daunting and probably a waste of time since I do not want to produce a random simulation.

Thanks again, I will report results.

[Antrax]

I think your comments make a lot of sense. GIB's design goal may have been misguided, IMO. It's designed to play Bridge as well as possible, and I think it probably does a good job at that. But if you're building a robot to play with humans, maybe the perception of playing well, or even not being anti-field by making the same mistakes a human would make, would be more important.

[Cthulhu D]

barmar, on 2012-February-11, 22:20, said:

Unfortunately, the description language doesn't allow for OR, so we can't say "4+ S OR (3+ S AND (1- H OR 1- D))", which is closer to the actual meaning of 1♣ 1♠ 2♠.

Wow, that's a major issue! Can that be added in as a language extension? It would seem to make the description language much more effective, and if you could specify the percentage for each total clause (so say 95% 4+ S OR 5+ 3 w/side suit singleton) you could much more accuracately inform GIB's simulations.

[barmar]

Cthulhu D, on 2012-February-22, 22:44, said:

Wow, that's a major issue! Can that be added in as a language extension? It would seem to make the description language much more effective, and if you could specify the percentage for each total clause (so say 95% 4+ S OR 5+ 3 w/side suit singleton) you could much more accuracately inform GIB's simulations.

It's not just the language, it's the way the program represents the information internally. It only has a single HCP range, total point range, suit length range, etc. for each hand.

[Cthulhu D]

Ugh, and I imagine changing the data structures is close to impossible. Intresting oversight. So I'm guessing GIB could never play Swedish club. Interesting