Re: computer-go: Re: alternatives to Alpha-Beta Search

["Gary Boos" <gboos@xxxxxxx>]

In next to last line:  what "...amount of work..." ?
        Gary
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-----Original Message-----
From: David Fotland <fotland@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: computer-go@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx <computer-go@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>;
computer-go@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx <computer-go@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Saturday, November 20, 1999 1:08 AM
Subject: Re: computer-go: Re: alternatives to Alpha-Beta Search


>At 09:46 AM 11/18/99 +0000, P.J.Leonard wrote:
>> Incidently my experience of watching my PN engine attempt to solve
>>problems
>>is that it tends to stay in a local situation for several moves (until
>>it realizes
>>that there is another area that is less effort to prove). It is my
>>strong
>>belief that the PN scheme is closer to the way us humans think than
>>alpha-beta.
>>
>>  cheers Paul.
>
>I agree that some kind of best first search like PN is better than
>alpha-beta, at least for those go searches of variable depth where
>there are some simple forced lines and other huge subtrees that
>go nowhere.  For life and death or string tactics the goal
>is a simple binary (live or die, capture or escape, etc).  I don't
>use PN because its estimate of the work to do to prove is just based
>on the number of moves generated.  In go, you can always generate
>a few hundred moves if you like :)  I use a heuristic to estimate the
>amount of work rather than the number of moves generated and it seems to
>work pretty well.
>
>David
>
>