Re: computer-go: question

["Tristan Cazenave" <cazenave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

>If you had an oracle that could tell you the life and death status of any
>block on the board, taking essentially no time to do so, how much do you
>think it would improve your program?

Hi, I worked more than one year on life and death assuming that having a
very
strong tsume-go problem solver in my program would make it much better,
but even after having a life and death module that is by far more stronger
than the other parts of Golois, I found that the level og Golois was only a
little
higher than it was before. Essentially because it makes groups with two eyes
and no territory and because it lacks knowledge on fuzeki and semeai and a
lot
of other things.

So having a strong life & death engine is important if you ever want to have
a 1 dan program some day, but it won't put your program much higher if your
program has major weaknesses in other major areas. And most, if not all, the
programs have this kind of weaknesses.