# CB-EV-0031 — a seat that does not regulate

CB-WP-0039. Tier M (adds a policy to the panel every future measurement is
reported against; chaos d8 = 2 → no override). **Declaration 11 of chaos
window 3.** Closed 2026-08-08.

> **CORRECTED 2026-08-08 after adversarial review, and most of the
> original file was wrong.** The review is in
> [`CB-REV-0001`](../reviews/CB-REV-0001-h1.md). The policy this pass
> called *"greedy with one preference changed"* differed in **five**
> places — including `SpendFreedom`, which it ranked 95 unconditionally
> where greedy ranks it 0 unless the gate bites, so the seat burned its
> Freedom token in round one of every game. **Every number below was
> measuring that bug.** They have been re-derived against a policy that
> delegates to `GreedyPolicy::rank` and overrides exactly one arm.
>
> Sections 1 and 2 are rewritten. **Section 3 is withdrawn entirely.**

**Delivered:** the `reactive` policy, and the measurement CB-EV-0030 §4
named as the one it had not run.

---

## 1. It changes CB-EV-0030's verdict

CB-EV-0030 concluded H1's DARVO arm rate was still 0. **That was true of
the panel, and the panel was greedy-family throughout.**

`GreedyPolicy` ranks `Action::Ground if gated => 100`: the instant the
stress gate bites it grounds. Stress plateaus at 3, and the arm at 5 is
unreachable **by construction**. So "H1 does nothing" was really "H1 does
nothing *to a seat that already manages its Stress*" — and H1 was written
for the seat that does not.

`reactive` now **delegates to `GreedyPolicy::rank` and overrides one arm**
(`Ground if gated`), so "one preference differs" is structurally true
rather than a claim. SHARED GROUND, 200 games per cell, all 200 ran, and
**`peak` is now Stress held, not Stress assigned** (§2):

| | | greedy | | | | reactive | | |
|---|---:|---:|---:|---:|---:|---:|---:|---:|
| **seats** | won | atk | darvo | peak | won | atk | darvo | peak |
| 2p | 68 | 0 | 0 | 4 | **66** | 726 | 363 | **5** |
| 3p | 0 | 0 | 0 | 4 | 0 | 1200 | 600 | **5** |
| 4p | 0 | 0 | 0 | 4 | 0 | 1600 | 800 | **5** |
| 6p | 0 | 0 | 0 | 4 | 0 | 2400 | 1200 | **5** |

**H1's mechanism does reach the unregulated seat.** DARVO arms **2 per
seat per game**, scaling with the table — where the earlier figure was a
flat 400 in every cell, which was an artifact of the broken policy.

**Criterion 3's verdict is corrected.** The original said reactive *"wins
nothing, at any seat count"*. **False.** At 2p it wins **66 against
greedy's 68** — indistinguishable. It wins nothing at 3p and above, which
is also where greedy wins nothing.

## 2. The baseline finding, which is larger than H1

Look at the baseline half of the same run. Greedy and reactive are
**identical** — 132/165/190/200, zero attacks, zero DARVO, in all four
bands.

**Peak Stress held across the 1,600 baseline games was 2 — the starting
value, never exceeded.** Stress only ever went down.

**Three corrections to what this section originally said.**

1. It reported **1**, because `peak` was a maximum over `StressSet` event
   *payloads*. Starting Stress is written by `setup`, never by an event,
   so a table sitting at 2 all game reported 1 — and a table with no
   `StressSet` at all would have reported 0. **Wrong subject**: the metric
   answered *"highest value ever assigned"* while the prose claimed
   *"highest Stress reached"*.
2. It said **3,200 baseline games**. The run is 3,200 *total*; the
   baseline half is **1,600**.
3. It generalised to *"a policy built to be reckless with Stress plays
   identically to one built to husband it"*. **False, and refuted by this
   repo's own sibling harness**: `attack-value.rs`'s rank-95 policy is
   exactly that policy, and under **baseline** it drives Stress to 5 and
   arms DARVO 400–1000 times per cell.

**What survives, stated narrowly.** Under both policies measured here —
neither of which ever selects ATTACK under baseline — **no Stress is ever
added at all**. The baseline's Stress economy is reachable only through
ATTACK, so a table that does not attack never meets the gate, the arm, or
the Freedom token. That is still a real observation about F17, and it is
**about ATTACK being the sole inbound pressure**, not about the economy
being unreachable in general.

## 3. WITHDRAWN — "H1-B suppresses DARVO in the attacker"

The original §3 argued that H1-B holds the attacker at Stress 4, below the
arm, and pushes its targets to 5 — inferred from a constant `darvo = 400`
and a final-Stress signature of `[5, 5, 4, 4, 4, 4]`.

**Withdrawn on two independent grounds, both found by the review.**

1. **The constant was the broken policy.** With the one-arm-override
   policy, `darvo` scales with seats (363/600/800/1200). There is no
   constant to explain.
2. **Disabling H1-B changes the arm count by exactly zero**, in every
   cell, under the corrected policy. The effect attributed to H1-B's
   arithmetic was an interaction with the undeclared preference deltas.

**And the inference was invalid even where the numbers held.** Final
Stress does not record who armed: `DarvoEnded` resets the stage to `Off`
and REVERSE applies −2 to its owner, so a seat can arm and finish below 5.
The review demonstrated six seats arming behind the same `[5,5,4,4,4,4]`
signature. **The original hedged the wrong variable** — it disclaimed "the
number 2" and defended "the direction", and the direction is the part that
failed.

## 4. What this does not say

- **`reactive` is not a good player and is not meant to be.** It wins
  nothing under H1 and exactly what greedy wins under baseline. It is an
  instrument for reaching the Stress economy, not a claim about how people
  play.
- **Two policies is still not a panel.** RetrospectiveAnalysis §4.1 asks
  for greedy, random and first-legal at minimum; this pass added a fourth
  axis to two of them, in one mode.
- **SHARED GROUND only.** CB-EV-0030 covered three modes; this covers one.
- **No felt-play**, and this is the kind of claim — about pressure, and
  when a player feels cornered — that a human table answers and 3,200
  simulated games do not.

## 5. Open

- **The baseline's Stress economy being unreachable (§2) deserves its own
  finding**, and is not raised here because it wants the plural panel of
  §4 first. It is the more consequential of the two results in this file.
- **Whether H1-B's suppression is intended** is ground-game's question,
  and it is the sharpest thing this pass can hand them.