Author: Pekka Karjalainen
Date: 08:39:34 06/22/00
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On June 21, 2000 at 21:49:04, Jorge Pichard wrote: >Since Go is twice harder to program than a regular chess Program, due to its >complexity of the rules of the game and its particular way the pieces move, I >wonder if Go Professional 2 has ever reached a Master level yet? I am no Go Master and I can beat any Go program there is :) It is not really possible to accurately rate the strenght of go programs at the present. There was some discussion on this in the newsgroup rec.games.go and my view is that there are not enough human vs. program games played. Partly this is because they are not interesting, since any weakie "club player" can waste the top program with (or often without) a little practice. This can be called the repeated games phenomenon, where a human who pays attention to the computer program's weaknesses can dramatically improve his results against the program. Someone might rate a program's play at 2 kyu (close to master) at first, but later find it plays more like 10 kyu (much weaker). It all is because the player starts figuring out the positions where the computer hasn't got a clue about what is going on. Some go programs have been awarded a rank diploma from the Japanese Go Association. These awards are not based on any scientific method and are believed by many to be much too optimistic. Maybe the idea was to encourage and reward programmers. Go has a huge branching factor, true, but so has Go-Moku and it has been solved by Victor Allis (I believe). The difficulty is with evaluating Go positions. It requires a subtle combination of calculation of moves and pattern matching which so far only humans can get good at. If you are a programmer and want to introduce yourself to the problems of go programming you might want to atke a look at the sources of GnuGo, a free go program. A lot has also been published by the top go programmers on the matter. I can dig up some references for anyone curious. I suggest it is probably better to put your request to me via e-mail, since this is a computer CHESS forum. BTW, Go pieces don't move. YOu just plonk one down whenever it is your turn and there it stays... (unless captured later). Pekka K.
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