Performance Enhancing Bug

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A particularly nasty type of bug that can be very difficult to deal with. The buggy code is not working as intended, but once the bug is "fixed", performance (usually RoboRumble rating) actually decreases.

There are a few possible ways to deal with this bug:

• Leave it in. This is the best performing solution in the short-term. However, it may become an obstacle to future improvements. The behavior caused by the bug may be erratic and unpredictable, making it difficult or impossible to tune other behaviors around.
• Fix the bug anyway. You may prefer to just accept the lower performance of your bot if it means it is "bug-free".
• Analyze the bug, fix it, and re-tune. The best possible scenario is that you are able to analyze what effect the bug is having, figure out why that causes increased performance, and implement a similar behavior in a bug-fixed version. This can be difficult and sometimes is not possible at all, but it is the win-win solution one should try to achieve.