Re: computer-go: extracting date to beat 9d from chess and draughts scene

[Heikki Levanto <heikki@xxxxxx>]

Stuart Cracraft <cracraft@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> At 03:18 PM 11/14/99 +0100, heikki wrote:
>>Could someone enlighten me as to what this wonderfull nullmove

> In regards to Go, it is simply "Pass".

Thanks. Could you (or someone else) also explain how increasing the
moves-to-be-tried from 361 to 362 will produce a huge reduction in the
search tree?

I can imagine this in some simple cases, like life and death in a corner. If
you assume the opponent passes on every move, and still can not be killed,
it is unconditionally alive, and we need not to search all the tricky
variations. (Also: if that group can not be enclosed with 5 moves in a row,
then it is not worth trying, or likewise for running out.) 

Is this it? To me it seems that this can be useful in some local searches,
mostly in those a human player would consider obvious, and for which some
simple heuristics can be devised (if it has two eyes, it lives anyway,
sectro line logic, etc.)

I still do not see any serious reduction in whole-board searches.


-- 
Heikki Levanto     LSD Levanto Software Development   heikki@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
               "In Murphy we Turst"