Re: [computer-go] A chess programmer at the Go-Olympiad

[Arend Bayer <arend.bayer@xxxxxx>]

Dear Chrilly Donninger,

> Like every chess programmer I am a believer in search and I do not really understand why Go programms do not use it (Martin gave me some good reasons, but the believe is too deep that one can be converted while drinking one beer). I was therefore deeply impressed by Aya. It seems to be one of the first real searchers. GA had not much trouble with Aya on 19x19, but it was helpless against the 7 Ply search in 9x9. The same holds with NeuroGO. On 19x19 it was a clear-cut win of GA. In 19x19 NeuroGo searches 1 Ply. In 9x9 the 3 Ply searching NeuroGo was clearly better than GA.

I am also a believer in search. But there are a lot of other things that
I believe one has to do for a go program as well :)

> The node count of Go-programs is unbelievable slow. I also thought that the number 620 on Ayas screen means 620 Kilo-Nodes. But Hiroshi explained me, its nodes. My impression from looking at the Gnu-Go and the GA code is. It is not only the complexity of the game. Go programmers obviously do not spend months to save a few nano-seconds in their time critical parts (maybe because there is no time critical part).

Of course I cannot tell about GA, in GNU Go, we do care about optimizing
performance critical parts (which is a pretty small amount of the actual
code) of GNU Go. We don't care much about speedups of about 1% or so,
but everything higher than that is us worth some effort.
(But we are not yet doing global search.)

I would offer you a different bet:
1. That you will pretty soon give up on the idea of making an
evaluation function as fast as you are thinking of now. Really the only
thing you can do without doing some tactical reading is s.th. like
Benson's algorithm of unconditional life, and this is just not
sufficient on 9x9.
2. That you won't beat GNU Go on 19x19 within 2 years.
3. That after 1 year, I can beat your program on 9x9 giving it a 2 stone
handicap on 9x9 after 4-5 training games for me. (I am 4d, and 2 stones
is about the handicap I would give to an 8k.)

Anyway, good luck!
Arend

P.S.: In case someone hasn't heard about Brutus: It has been a remarkably
successful project as work on it started AFAIK only 3 years ago, and it's now
competing with the absolute top programs.

-- 
Arend Bayer, Flodelingsweg 27a, 53121 Bonn, 0228-9813803
arend.bayer@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

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