On 8 Jul 2011 at 11:28, Andy Latto wrote:
On Thu, Jul 7, 2011 at 6:17 PM, Bernie Cosell <bernie@fantasyfarm.com> wrote:
2) bridge masters seemed to occasionally make counter-probabilistic plays [playing finesses and for suit splits, etc], but as a corollary to (1), he discovered that their play was actually correct for the *actual* probabilities [due to the inadequate shuffles].
I've seen this claim before, but I don't believe it.
I've never seen a source for it. I've read Persi Diaconis' paper on shuffling, and it's not there. I read the bridge publications that the experts read, such as "The Bridge World", and I've never seen it there. I've talked to a friend who has represented the US in the Bermuda Bowl (the most prestigious of the world championships), and he's never heard anything like that from any experts.
I heard it from Persi, directly, when he came to BBN and gave us a lecture on this and other things he was working on [how to flip a coin fairly, etc]. This would have been maybe 1980 or so [???] -- it was after the Newman auditorium was opened, so I guess it couldn't have been really back in the old days... I never followed up on it but it just stuck as an oddity. [my thought was that it seemed very surprising, because it is hard to imagine anyone, even a full time professional player, playing enough hands to detect, notice, quantify and take advantage of such a very small deviation. Sort of like, how many times do you have to flip a coin to decide it is every so slightly biased] /B\ -- Bernie Cosell Fantasy Farm Fibers mailto:bernie@fantasyfarm.com Pearisburg, VA --> Too many people, too few sheep <--