AV-AIVAT cuts agent evaluation cost 74x with certified anytime-valid stopping.

arXiv 2608.06362 combines variance-reduced outcome estimation with anytime-valid confidence sequences so an eval stops the moment evidence suffices without breaking validity. Across 15 agent configs and 71,439 paired poker hands, AIVAT alone gave 54x median variance reduction, and raw outcomes needed 74x as many hands to hit the same ±1 BB stopping criterion. The reproducibility angle matters more than the cost: it hands a third party everything needed to recheck the verdict at that exact stopping point.