Re: Go program strength

[David Fotland <fotland@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

There is certainly truth to this.  The top program(s) in the
computer-computer tournaments get a lot of royalty money from
licenses for asian versions.  So there is a lot of incentive
to tune to beat the other programs.  Also, when improving a
program, its nice to be able to test changes to see if the program
is stronger.  Playing 50 or 100 games against another computer
opponent answers this question.  It's not possible to get the
same kind of data against a human opponent.  The variation in
result from game to game is so high that you have to play a lot
of games to get any meaningful statistics on improvements.

I test against 2 or 3 other programs each year, a total of
a few hundred games.  Michael Reiss tests against many programs,
10's of games per day.  Many Faces is designed to do well against
people, hence the focus on tactics, but since most of my test games
are against other programs, it's possible some bias toward techniques
that beat programs but not people has crept in :)

David


At 09:48 AM 2/9/99 +0000, Tim Hunt wrote:
>On Mon, 8 Feb 1999, Nick Wedd wrote:
>
>> Compgo123@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx writes
>> >One possible reason the programs in tournaments are one stone stronger
than
>> >the commercial versions is that the author can change strategy and
parameters
>> >before each game.
>> 
>> But they don't do this.  At least, they didn't while I was watching the
>> 1998 Ing Cup, though there was no rule against it.
>> 
>> A more likely reason is that they enter their latest and best version
>> for the tournament.  It may then take up to a year to go through the
>> process of building, marketing and releasing it as a commercial program.
>
>There is also the theory that since the Computer Ing Cup and simmilar
>events are the main testing ground for go programs, the programs are
>designed to perform well there, rather than against humans. What do people
>here think about that? Is it just slander, or is there some truth in it?
>
>Tim.
>
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