Artificial Intelligence at bridge
Presentation of the bridge game engineArgine, the club queen
Argine is the name given to Funbridge game engine (or artificial intelligence). The creators (Alexis Maugat and Jérôme Rombaut) named it after the club queen found on French card games.
Argine is the anagram of regina ("queen" in Latin). There is much speculation as to the woman she represents: Charlemagne's concubine, daughter of the Greek king Adrastus, Marie of Anjou, Juno or Anne of Brittany...
Just for the record, it is the only card representing a woman who is not holding flowers.
But let's return to Argine, the one you play bridge with.
Argine, the game engine
On Funbridge, you play with a partner against virtual opponents, i.e. robots, controlled by Argine. Unlike human players, Argine is always available to play with you. No need to wait until three other players become available to play a deal.
Introduced in Funbridge in 2012, Argine has never stopped evolving ever since (at a rate of 1-2 new versions per month).
The objective of each new version is to have her mimic human behaviour as effectively as possible. In January 2015, Argine reached the symbolic 200 versions mark!
Argine is literally addicted to online bridge. She plays endlessly! Indeed, every day, she plays over 5 million deals in a row!
Another staggering figure: in 2015, she played with more than 100,000 different players of all levels, from beginners to the best world players.
The great strength of Argine is that she is able to adapt to the bidding conventions and systems used by the players she plays with, which is far from being easy!
Indeed, she can play several bidding systems: French 5-card major system, English ACOL system, Polish Club, SAYC, Nordic system and NBB standard. Argine also adapts to the two card play signalling systems you can select in the Funbridge settings.
No less.
You should know that Argine will let you play in her seat when you will be in dummy just to please you! Isn't she nice?
Argine always tries to play quickly. With some partners, she is capable of playing deals in less than a minute.
Our queen is always courteous in all circumstances. She will never complain about you even if you make mistakes. She is not vindictive and is always eager to play. She will always gladly accept to play with you even if you have scolded her.
Argine will also accompany you on practice deals. She always agrees to replay them with you as many times as you wish. Take this opportunity to analyse her advice and dissect her play.
Since 2015, Argine has even been offering you to make corrections to your bidding at the end of deals to explain to you why you didn't understand one another.
As she wants to make sure there is no misunderstanding, she has introduced alerts in her system of play to get you vigilant on the bids that could be misinterpreted.
We have decided to introduce her to you today to give you further details on the way she plays (see below), hoping that it will allow you to better understand her.
Argine is very comfortable with the 1NT opening. There are fewer and simpler associated sequences! That is the reason why sometimes some players take the liberty of opening 1NT with a singleton, a 5-card major and 14 or 18 points.
However, let's be careful because even if this way of playing may prove effective, it is far from guaranteeing a top systematically. And you are likely to come a cropper.
Please note that if you bid a given suit and you have a fit, Argine will persist in going back to it. Likewise, if you have made the wrong bid, don't try to rectify. Argine has complete confidence in you and strongly believes in what you bid first.
If you don't understand your partner's or opponents' bids, display the pop-up window with bidding tips: it will show you the meaning of each bid made (point range and estimated number of cards per suit). This window will also be helpful if you want to be sure that Argine understands your bid. Indeed, it also shows how Argine will interpret your bid. Convenient, isn't it?
Likewise, if an alerted bid has been made, take some time to analyse its meaning. It will prevent you from embarking on a grotesque contract.
After the first bidding rounds, Argine does no longer reason like you. In fact, she selects a sample of deals that could match the beginning of the bidding sequence and analyses the result of each contract on all these deals.
Once she is done with analysis, she declares the best contract from a statistical point of view based on this sample.
This technique differs from human approach. That is the reason why sometimes she may want to stop at 2H for instance, but then if opponents bid 3C, possible distributions change and she thinks that 4H would be a good bet after all.