Author: martin fierz
Date: 19:10:45 10/24/02
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On October 24, 2002 at 18:28:07, Dieter Buerssner wrote: >You post made me think of other games. What I know as "Mühle" - I think the >English term is 9-men morris, but I am not sure, is a solved game now. The >result is a draw. There is a good indication, that black (the one who will not >do the first move) has an easier game. I wonder: Can the best humans draw vs. a >computer, that can solve the game? Can they draw now and then, or often? Can >they draw with white, now and then? i knew a guy who worked in the same research group as ralph gasser (the one who solved nine men's morris), who told me that even after ralph had solved it some humans still claimed they could beat the computer :-) i'll my friend a mail and ask if they ever played against humans. >Also, with typical game search algorithms, one could expect, that a player, that >can calculate till the end of the game (the draw) would not be the harderst >opponent, in the sense, that it might win a match with the biggest margin. It >might choose some "random" drawing move, which is not too hard to reply. Is any >information about this available. all i can tell you is about my checkers program: there, i have 8-piece endgame databases. schaeffer writes about these in his book 'one jump ahead' that the best humans can usually understand 6-piece endgames, but the 8-piece endgames are too hard for humans. so this is some sort of example for what you look for - a game where the computer is perfect, and the human not. what actually happens with my database is this: my program will essentially choose a random drawing move in every drawn position, since it does not differentiate between draws. the (imperfect) opponent usually plays 'good' moves in the sense that his move (as long as it preserves the draw) actually tries to achieve something. so what happens is that my program ends up in more or less the worst possible draw instead of going for the best possible draw, where the opponent would have to be very careful not to lose.... i'll have to fix that some time.... >As a kid, I played this game very much with my parents and grand parents. We >used knobs (Not sure, if this is the correct English word - the things you use >to "close" your shirt) "button" is better. a knob is more like, in german, ein knopf, aber so einer wie am radio wo du die lautstaerke einstellst. ein drehbarer knopf halt. >the game in our dialect "niini Moal" (trying to give a spelling from the sound). >Anybody here knows this word? i don't have any umlaute on my keyboard in hawaii, but in zuerich the game is called nueni-mal. at least that's what my mother called it - in bern we called it muehle. aloha martin
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