News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:The expected value of the game is positive regardless of ... by vjo on Friday September 06, 2024 @06:36AM (#41464803)
I did a very similar exercise after reading the original post.

You can get the EV a lot closer to the optimal +0.2 (Although I was unable to prove how close) by dropping the requirement "do not increase worst-case complexity for the binary search" as this is lost with initial guesses outside 36-64 anyway. Deviating at a higher depth makes punishing specific guesses in the tails a lot cheaper, only giving up 1-2 cents of EV.

Re:The expected value of the game is positive regardless of ... by gukoff on Friday September 06, 2024 @08:59AM (#41465765)
Interesting! What about the worst case? And which kinds of strategies did you pick?
Re:The expected value of the game is positive regardless of ... by vjo on Friday September 06, 2024 @03:20PM (#41468937)
Using random strategies with small sub-optimal deviations, I get to about $0.189

Ref. https://pastebin.com/YcRhGpV6