Re: [computer-go] Modern brute force search

[Don Dailey <drd@xxxxxxx>]

>   >It sounds like GO isn't as complicated as I thought it was, due to the
>   >fact that many of you believe masters are pretty close to optimal play.
>
>   3-5 stones might not sound like very much, but the scale appears to be
>   logarithmic.  For each stone you improve, the next is harder.  By the
>   time you get to professional level, it requires a very large increase in
>   knowledge etc. (ie mastery of much more complication) to improve by one stone.


It's  possible that 3-5  stones is  a much  bigger difference  than it
seems so maybe that explains  things.  My main point of speculation is
that there should  (extropolating from checkers to chess  to Go) be an
enormous  difference, whatever  than means,  between the  current best
players and the omniscient player, especially if the omniscient player
is programmed to take advantage of human failings.

I would point  out that at some point  Chinook, (the checkers program)
was  programmed  to make  complications  to  avoid  as many  draws  as
possible.

I guess that means it's unlikely  there will be better GO players than
todays best, at least not very  much better.  It is believed that this
is  not the  case in  Chess but  it really  is pure  speculation.  But
people used  to feel Bobby Fischer  was such a giant  that nobody came
close, and it  was likely nobody would for quite  some time.  But then
Kasparov  came  along and  some  believe  he  was much  stronger  than
Fischer, where comparing  prime years to prime years.   Of course much
of this is pure speculation and idol worship.  No one can say for sure
who was better than anyone else when many years separate them.

What is clear is that Fischer  seemed to be WAY ahead of everyone else
in  his day  (probably also  Kasparov), which  shows that  were  was a
clearly  measurable gap  ABOVE every  else before  Fischer.  To  me it
doesn't  seem reasonable  to believe  Fischer was  the  ultimate, just
because he happened to be above  others of his day.  It tells me there
is probably a whole lot of  space left at the top and Fischer happened
to be in a  position to take up just a little bit  more of it than the
others.  Then Kasparov did, etc.

I don't know how to compare  this gap with GO.  If an omniscient chess
player could win 95% of it's  games against a Bobby Fischer, how would
that compare to "number of stones" in Go?

- Don
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