Author: Pekka Karjalainen
Date: 03:22:37 05/05/02
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On May 04, 2002 at 07:19:48, Vine Smith wrote: >>http://www.buggy-online.com/english/match_samb_buggy/match_samb_buggy_e.htm >If you look at the analyzed games on the site, you'll notice a striking >similarity to the situation in computer chess -- the program was a dangerous >tactician, but had no "feel" for the position. Samb won the tiebreak by >exploiting a positional weakness he had noticed in an earlier game. Since >draughts is a more tactical game than chess, this would seem to indicate that >positional problems will continue to plague chess programs far into the future. I am not sure I know what you mean by more tactical, but draughts would seem to be less tactically complex to me than chess, since there are only two types of pieces and the board is actually smaller. Only 50 squares are used in draughts of the 10x10 board. Currently it seems that board games fall into a few major categories in human vs. computer play: 1) too simple tic-tac-toe - which is always a draw with competent human or computer play 2) solved by computers only nine-mens-morris, go-moku where good human players can draw at best, but cannot beat the computer any more, unless the game is a win with the first move advantage (or similar). even then for tactically complex games the computer will be likely to win anyway, since it does not make mistakes. (It was once claimed on the net by a nine-mens-morris player that the program that solved the game cannot necessarily win a nmm tournament, since it is too easy to draw against, while the best human knows how to swindle other human players.) 3) dominated by computers 8x8 checkers, 8x8 othello where the top humans have not been able to demonstrate ability to beat the computer for some time, yet the games are not yet solved or likely to be solved in the near future. 4) contested by humans at top level chess, 10x10 draughts, a few others games where the top computers do not yet clearly demonstrate superiority to humans. the indications might be that they will get there, but we cannot know how hard the last hurdles are to overcome. 5) dominated by humans shogi, go games where there is still no question of seriously challenging the very best human players by computers. shogi might fall to category 4) some day soon, but I don't think computer go is going anywhere :-/ Now, looking at this list, what does it mean that a game A is more tactical than B? Can you explain? Does the term positional play in draughts have any relation to positional play in chess, since they are two completely different games? Pekka
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