Re: [computer-go] future KGS Computer Go Tournaments - two sections?

[Don Dailey <drd@xxxxxxx>]

>  If someone applies some new technology to write a bot, and thereby 
>  achieves something which can beat MFoG, while putting in less than 1% of 
>  the effort that David has invested, that'll be great!

It would be great, but not if they took David Fotlands 99% effort to do it.
If they did this on their own, I would agree.

- Don




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   Date: Wed, 11 May 2005 10:39:33 +0100
   From: Nick Wedd <nick@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
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   In message <BAY9-DAV16C2F18C63F2E517D67B6A9C100@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, Vlad 
   Dumitrescu <vlad_dumitrescu@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes
   >Hi all,
   >
   >I hope I may throw in my 2 cents on the issue. Probably nothing new, but
   >hopefully in a different light.

   I broadly agree with Vlad - but it seems I differ from him on several 
   relatively unimportant points ...

   >I think that there is one question one would like to answer before diving
   >deeper: what is the purpose of computer-game tournaments?
   >
   >If the answer is "to crown the best playing program", my feeling is that any
   >program should be allowed to enter, in any amount. I assume an
   >"all-play-all" tournament, so that no competitor is pushed down in a lesser
   >league just because there are many entrants.

   If the object is "to crown the best playing program", and we allow any 
   programs to enter in any amount, the leading contenders will enter 
   dozens of copies.  This will make the numbers too high for Round Robin, 
   so we will be using Swiss.  And the results table will be absurd, with 
   some programs doing nothing but play copies of themselves.

   Also, this will tend to reward programmers who can borrow a commercial 
   network for the weekend, to run all their copies on.

   >If the answer is "to crown the programmer/team that produced the best
   >playing program", then it is of course unfair to allow a lucky newbie to
   >stumble onto a combination of tuning parameters and get credited without any
   >nights lost and sweat and tears.

   I have nothing against rewarding lucky newbies.

   If someone applies some new technology to write a bot, and thereby 
   achieves something which can beat MFoG, while putting in less than 1% of 
   the effort that David has invested, that'll be great!

   >It is in the latter case that we have the main grey zone and the most
   >difficult choices. And in my opinion, the two leagues proposed by Nick are
   >nicely reflecting these two ways to look at things. Maybe the "best program"
   >league entrants could run anonymously, only TD and respective authors
   >knowing who is behind a handle?

   I think I am going to go with the two leagues.

   >best regards,
   >Vlad
   >
   >p.s. There is a grey zone in the former case too: what if a rich person buys
   >a supercomputer and runs GnuGo out of the box on it? Maybe right now the
   >programs aren't very scalable, but in the near future they might. Then
   >hardware might matter more than algorithms... But I feel this one is much
   >less of a problem.

   I don't think it is a big problem, and I am not planning to do anything 
   about it.

   It's not just that the programs aren't scalable, it's that the whole 
   task isn't scalable.  Give a program more time and it doesn't really 
   know how to use it.  This is what makes SlugGo interesting.  The SlugGo 
   team are doing their best to see how much improvement they can get by 
   applying extra computing power.  I hope they will forgive me if I say 
   that despite their efforts, the increase in strength is not 
   proportionate to the computing power applied.

   Nick
   -- 
   Nick Wedd    nick@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
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