Division of Informatics
Forrest Hill & 80 South Bridge

MSc Thesis #9816
Title:	Adding Trump Play to FINESSE
Authors:	Jackson,AG
Date:	1998
Presented:
Keywords:
Abstract:	FINESSE is a program for declarer play in Bridge that uses techniques of proof planning to play games in no trumps. FINESSE breaks down the problem of declarer play in Bridge by analysing single suits and combining these suit plans to form an overall line of play.Trump play, by its very nature, requires more than one suit to be considered simultaneously. We therefore look at a technique for adding trump play to FINESSE that considers two suits at a time - the trump suit and one other suit. We call this approach dual-suit analysis.We describe an implementation of a dual-suit planner and interpreter, ncluding tactics for play in trumps. We show that the tactics are effective on both random deals and set problems, and quantify the increase in the search space. We also identify some general problems with the dual-suit approach that we believe make it impractical to build a full Bridge-playing system based solely on dual-suit analysis. However, we finally look at a different proposal for implementing trump play, suggested by the original author of FINESSES, and identify how some of the formalisations and results of dual-suit analysis can be utulised within this new framework.
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Division of InformaticsForrest Hill & 80 South Bridge