Re: computer-go: Complexity & SW

[David and Patricia <babel17@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Don Dailey wrote:

> But take a game like  tic-tac-toe.  It doesn't take  a child very long
> to master  this game and  play  to a draw  every  time.  It's easy  to
> visualize getting a line of 3 x's or  3 o's.  And  yet these games are
> exactly equivalent.  If   you place the number  1  - 9  on the various
> squares of a tic-tac-toe board, then picking a number is equivalent to
> picking an empty box and putting your mark in it:

I think this is a wonderful example of how a person's way of thinking differs
from the way computers can think. Not only is tic-tac-toe is very easy for
people, but the numerical version is, I think, the easiest way to code it up.

It reminds me of the problem of how to put the numbers from 1 to 25 in a 5x5
grid so that each row and each column add up to the same number (13). The
search space for solving this problem is enormous, but once you know the trick
it becomes trivial. (The trick works for any NxN grid provided N is odd.)

Now this reminds me of the 2-person game called Nim which is quite fun until
you know "the trick", then it becomes trivial.

So, I am looking for the trick which will make it possible for GL7 (my go
program) to give a 9 Dan professional 9 stones and win, but I hope that it
does not make the game trivial because go is such a good game. Actually that
is not true, as long as it is ME that finds the trick I won't care whether it
trivialises go or not !!!

Cheers

David