RE: [computer-go] Time constraints for computer Go

["David Fotland" <fotland@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> 
> At the moment SlugGo is the only software that scales well. 

I have to disagree with this :)  Many Faces also scales well.  It
has 10 playing levels and if you try them you will see that the
strength scales up with the additional time at the higher levels.
At the higher levels the search is set to look wider and deeper.

I chose not to include a level that allows it to think longer, since it
is a commercial program.  In early versions, I let the top level think for a
long time,
but I got too many complaints.  Customers like to set it to the top level to

get the strongest possible opponent, but then they complain that it is too
slow.

I know this is irrational on their part, so please don't complain to me
about it :)
But it is a real issue, so I restricted the top level to play a game in an
hour
on the typical 400 MHz machine available when version 11 shipped.  Now of
course,
it looks like it is playing way too fast, but I didn't expect that it would
take so
long to release version 12.

I could have measured the computer speed and adjusted, but I don't want to
do that
since I want the searches to be reproducable.  When I see it make a bad
move, to
debug it, I want to to make the same search every time.  That means that the
levels
are search-size based, time based.

The version I run now on IGS keeps searching to use all available time, and
it plays
better when it gets more time.

Regards,

David



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