[gobdovan]

You're mixing two different objectives the paper presents. You can't beat binary search when the objective is to minimise the expected number of turns in a single player setting.

However, in a two player setting, using the strategies presented in the paper, you will beat an adversary that uses binary search in more than 50% of the games played.

Here's another visual demonstration: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmvn4dnq82U

[thaumasiotes]

What do you think you're saying that I didn't already say?

> in a two player setting, using the strategies presented in the paper, you will beat an adversary that uses binary search in more than 50% of the games played.

This is technically true. But 50 percentage points of your "more than 50%" of games played are games where you exclusively use binary search. For the remainder, you're redistributing luck around between potential games in a way that is negative-sum, exactly like I just said.

[gobdovan]

> But 50 percentage points of your "more than 50%" of games played are games where you exclusively use binary search

Although I think I get your point, saying 'You can't beat binary search in Guess Who' is misleading, considering you would probably describe yourself the optimal strategy as 'play binary search when ahead, when behind, don't'.

> Trying to get lucky means that you intentionally play badly in order to get more victories

That's quite an uncommon definition of good and bad.