Re: Scoring Go games

[Antti Huima <huima@xxxxxx>]

On Thu, 17 Jun 1999, Mousheng Xu wrote:

> At 12:23 PM 6/17/99 +0200, Patricia Hughes and David Elsdon wrote:
> >Hi there,
> >Now to the problem. Scoring the game is a real pain. My program is not
> >very good at scoring yet and accurate scoring is important to the
> >learning software. So does anybody know where I can find a scoring

> Patricia,
> 
> In some sense, a scoring function is ALL you need for a go program.
> These two simple and easy algorithms should work:
> 	1. Brute-force evaluation -- after you calculate all the
> possibilities, you will know the score. :)
> 	2. A quick estimation -- score(board) = #(black) - #(white).
> Very quick evaluation.
> 
> 	The 1st approach will give the exact score, which is excellent,
> but with a slight limiation: too much time. The advantage of the 2nd
> approach is obvious: quick. But it won't give you a good score.

Dear Mousheng Xu,

If I understood correctly, David asked for an algorithm that scores
finished games, not unfinished positions. Some people have implemented
scoring algorithms for finished games, e.g. Dave Dyer.

> Although Antti Huima and you are proposing some "promising" AI method,
> I still doubt your algorithms will work if you have not calculated the
> speed of evolution of your programs. 9 x 9 & 19 x 19 are of huge
> difference -- it's the difference of a chess program and a go program.
> Why people bother a 9 x 9 board?

?

What is `speed of evolution'?

The difference of a chess program and a go program is not in the board
size. I haven't seen a grandmaster 9x9 go algorithm yet, although
grandmaster chess algorithms exist. Why shouldn't people bother to
understand the 9x9 game, as that would clearly lead to deep understanding
at least of the tactical parts of a go program??

My "promising" AI method (assuming you refer to the idea for acquising
patterns) is not directly related to board size as it is simply a method
for mining often occurring patterns from game records.

Yours sincerely,

-- 
Antti Huima
SSH Communications Security Oy