Re: Strong players only?

[Compgo123@xxxxxxx]

I agree with some of the posts that search (brute or not) is very important in
computer Go. Actually it's the only hope that a Go program can win over a high
ranking professional player. The reasons are the following. 

First, let's list the advantages of computer over human.

1.Linear( in reference to the massive parallel processing in human brains)
processing speed. --  orders of magnitude faster;
2.Memory - both in amount (two order of magnitude better is already good
enough. more if needed) and reliability (no error at all and never forget);
3.Don't make errors (ok, for those of you, let's say computers make no
mistakes, only have buggs); 

The second and third advantages works great in against lower ranking players
(up to professional 1 or 2 dan?). However, higher ranking professional players
rarely lose a game because who doesn't know or can't remember a sequences or
pattern. And they don't make many large errors neither. There is another
reason that also diminishes the effect of the 3rd advantage. When talking
about Go knowladge, people usually refering to principles and strategies
besides move sequences. By nature, these principles and strategies are
incomplete, and imperfect. Otherwise, we would say that the Go game is solved.
Even if a computer program can incorperate all available Go principles and
strategies, it's still not good enough because these knowledges themself are
flawed by nature.  So only the first advantage provides considerable edge to
computer over high ranking professional players. Computer can sort through
much more nodes than a human can. 

Dan Liu