Re: computer-go: A problem with understanding lookahead

[Vincent Diepeveen <diep@xxxxxxxxx>]

A queen is 10 points worth in beginners terms.

That's nearly half of all your pieces.

In go terms that's equal to start with 150 stones up.

I can easily give you positions which are very modern
theory where you can give a queen for some kind of center
compensation. But i doubt there are game type of positions
also played by professional go players where one side has a 
150 stone advantage!

Line i was referring to in chess: KID with f3 and Qh4 Nxg3 line.
Very popular line.

Note when talking about my king safety it can be 30 pawns
i measured in some positions.

Can you have a compensation equalling more as the total material
count of all go stones, so 361 stones?

Greetings,
Vincent




At 11:08 PM 1/19/01 +0100, you wrote:
>Well Vincent, I may not be a strong Chess player, but I'm not really a
>beginner either. It certainly looks like I know more about Chess than you
>know about Go.
>
>Given an average Chess position, if one side or the other suddenly loses a
>piece (I mean a 'piece', not just a pawn) that will make a big difference. A
>game deciding loss on every level but the very lowest ones. Positions where
>you can lose a piece but the positional advantage balances the loss out are
>relatively very rare compared to the positions where it would mean losing
>the game. I challenge your statement that controlling the center is more
>important than material. Give me your queen and I'd be happy to let you
>control the center. Not to mention losing your king (mate plus one ply).
>
>Evaluation in Go is not just calculating some influence from stones and
>determine areas (territory), even though those operations are already way
>more costly than the simple piece count in Chess. If you'd do that, you
>would have to read the position up to a point way beyond where even very
>weak players would have started passing. (Probably at least 50 more ply.)
>
>I'm aware of course that a Chess program that only counts pieces is not very
>strong, but still relatively strong compared to nowadays Go programs. Add a
>few simple rules of thumb, like center control and pawn structures and it
>gets you a long way towards an expert player. There's nothing so simple in
>Go. Just to know which stones are dead or alive, even very simple cases, you
>need to make a very sophisticated program to figure that information out.
>And that doesn't have so much to do with board-size. If it were, it should
>be easy to make a very strong 9x9 program, but it isn't. It's hard because
>evaluation in Go is very, very difficult.
>
>    Mark
>
>----- Original Message -----
>From: Vincent Diepeveen <diep@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>To: <computer-go@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>Sent: Friday, January 19, 2001 4:16 PM
>Subject: Re: computer-go: A problem with understanding lookahead
>
>
>> At 03:50 AM 1/19/01 +0100, you wrote:
>> >
>> >----- Original Message -----
>> >From: Vincent Diepeveen <diep@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>> >To: <computer-go@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>> >Sent: Friday, January 19, 2001 1:24 AM
>> >Subject: Re: computer-go: A problem with understanding lookahead
>> >
>> >
>> >> At 11:18 PM 1/18/01 +0100, you wrote:
>> >> >
>> >> >----- Original Message -----
>> >> >From: Don Dailey <drd@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>> >> >To: <computer-go@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>> >> >Sent: Thursday, January 18, 2001 10:02 PM
>> >> >Subject: Re: computer-go: A problem with understanding lookahead
>> >> >
>> >> >
>> >> >>
>> >> >> You obviously are not familiar  with the computer chess world,
>because
>> >> >> "counting  material" is a  horrible evaluation  function and  does
>not
>> >> >> lead to "sophisticated positional judgement" in modern programs
>> >> >
>> >> >The qualification of 'horrible' is rather relative of course. There's
>no
>> >Go
>> >> >program that has an evaluation that comes even close to the precision
>of
>> >> >counting material in Chess, and I don't think there will be for quite
>> >some
>> >> >time.
>> >>
>> >> I think this is not true Mark, of course you need to burn
>> >> more system time for evaluation as the board is bigger,
>> >> but i think the only difference is the branching factor.
>> >>
>> >
>> >Well, we disagree on this point then. I think relatively speaking
>currently
>> >all go programs make evaluation errors on a regular basis that misjudge
>the
>> >position by a chess-piece or worse. I don't think this discrepancy is
>> >covered by the deeper search simple-minded chess-programs do.
>> >
>> >    Mark
>>
>> The basic problem is that you look to chess as a beginner,
>> for me GO is a very simple game. Just throw a few stones on the
>> board calculate some area and group influences and that's it.
>> O yeah, of course take care a group doesn't get hung!
>>
>> So the basic evaluation though burning more system time is
>> not much difference from GO and chess.
>>
>> In chess a material only search will lose from any chessplayer
>> who is playing in a chessclub.
>>
>> Material is an important factor, but more important is to
>> develop near the center. Even a piece less in beginnersgames
>> is not importantthen.
>>
>> Basically we talk about a real strong approach of go for your
>> GO program versus a beginners approach for chess, whereas i
>> have the same for go.
>>
>> My vision is that making a go program is dead simple, but that
>> the only problem is the branching factor!
>>
>> You don't even need to take into account king safety
>> for example, the most important and hardest to calculate
>> factor of a chessprogram. In my program it can be worth
>> 30 pawns of compensation!
>>
>> Some programs nowadays lose games to other programs and to
>> mankind, BECAUSE they sacrafice a pawn for nothing,
>> whereas in GO sacraficing a few stones is no big deal
>> as you have plenty!
>>
>> Greetings,
>> Vincent
>>
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