Re: computer-go: new strategy game with $10,000 prize

[William Harold Newman <william.newman@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Tue, Jan 21, 2003 at 06:52:38PM -0800, Dave Dyer wrote:
>  I think you're mistaken on one point.  If Arimaa has 1000x the
> branching factor of chess, then programs similar to deep blue
> will be helpless.   Good chess programs search the full tree
> to great depth, and do pruning by using strategies to make 
> alpha-beta more effective, not by preemptively eliminating
> lines of play.  Conversely, chess programs that are not based
> on brute force search are not contenders.
> 
>  I agree that you can't make any prediction about how easy or hard it 
> would be to write an effective program, or for a human to learn,
> based solely on the size of the move tree.

The game of Amazons
  <http://www.cs.ualberta.ca/~tegos/amazons/>
has a reasonably impressive branching factor, and my impression is
that existing programs which don't use radically new techniques still
play a decent game.

-- 
William Harold Newman <william.newman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
"That's our advantage at Microsoft; we set the standards and we can
change them."
 -- Karen Hargrove, Microsoft (quoted in Feb 1993 Unix Review editorial)
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