Play Bridge

That bridge game is near impossible. I've beaten it 3 times over the course of 3 months. What are your experiences with that game?

What Bridge game? Contract Bridge?

Perhaps he means the Chronic Logic game Pontifex ?

I think he means this. It's a small quick game that is on the main site page.

There is also a thread about it somewhere that shows the easiest way to beat it. Once you learn how it's played, it's very easy to win.

Yep there are certain tactics that make it much easier to win and the computer will always make the same moves.

Oh ok.
I tried it and worked it out in a few minutes. The computer beat me three times but I just watched what it did and used that against it. It couldn't defeat its own tactics!

The game was originally called "Gale" and was invented by Dr. David Gale in 1958. He outlined a strategy for an automaton to play it. I programmed up the game about 5 years ago in C, using the strategy that Gale outlined. It plays a very good but not perfect game - you have to play "obscurely" to beat it.

The automaton's strategy was this. Imagine a rectangular lattice of resistors all of the same value of resistance. This lattice represents all the possible moves by one of the players, in this case the computer. Every time the opponent makes a move you break the resistor that the move intersects (resistance = infinity). Every time the computer makes a move you short-circuit the equivalent resistor (resistance = 0). You find the computer's "best" move at any time by applying a potential across the two sides that the computer is trying to join. The resistor with the greatest potential across it is the move it should play.

It's quite easy to "simulate the simulation" in a C program (though C++ might have been easier). Every pass through the simulated lattice adjusts each node's potential. You just iterate until the potentials settle down. Like I say, you can fool it, but you have to know how.

I beat this game the 4th time I tried

I used to be able to beat it, I have long since forgot

Oh no! I dont know how to play it and the boss is coming round for dinner any minute!! Even worse my trousers have just fallen down! June, hide me in the understairs cupboard!