Author: Reinhard Scharnagl
Date: 03:52:51 06/28/05
Go up one level in this thread
On June 28, 2005 at 06:39:35, Tord Romstad wrote: >On June 28, 2005 at 03:26:12, Reinhard Scharnagl wrote: > >>10x8 chess also compatibly is leaving the old ways of chess programming >>moreover having about 25% more moves in each ply of computing, which might be >>a good way to approach to Go programming later. >I used to think so, too, but my experience with hexagonal chess has made me >change my mind. My program plays both games, using the same source code >(with a few tiny differences). The games are similar, except that the average >number of legal moves is about 2.5 times bigger in hexagonal chess. I expected >this to be a major problem, but it turns out that it isn't. The search >techniques >from classical chess work just as well in the more complex game of hexagonal >chess. Of course the bigger branching factor makes it impossible for the >program to search quite as deeply as in classical chess, but this is a problem >for human players as well. > >The really hard thing about go and shogi compared to chess (from a >programmer's point of view) is the difficulty of writing a good evaluation >function. In chess, material is much more important than everything >else. You can play chess well without doing much more than counting >material. In go or shogi, you will have to work really hard to produce >an evaluation function which works as well as a material-only eval in >chess. Tord, at the first view I had similar thoughts, but a second one corrected my mind. I do not think anymore that the huge branching factor of Go would be the most re- levant problem, but the occurrence of INDEPENDENT LOCAL strategic and tactic battles compared to 8x8 Chess is. This already happens in 10x8 Chess, thus this is a first drosophila for testing. I do not think, that the evaluation problem of Go is that important. I believe that instead it is highly relevant, what the overall result of placing a single stone somewhere at the board would be. This is a more philosophical question on the nature of the Go game. Reinhard.
This page took 0 seconds to execute
Last modified: Thu, 15 Apr 21 08:11:13 -0700
Current Computer Chess Club Forums at Talkchess. This site by Sean Mintz.