Author: Russell Reagan
Date: 21:34:45 11/26/02
While I was at work tonight sitting at a computer, having nothing to do, I opened up the calculator program and started playing around with the branching factor for the game of go. I quickly realized that with such a large branching factor at each level (361 from the starting position), it's no wonder computer go programs play well below master level. Are there any games that have a high branching factor that computers are good at? The only games that I'm somewhat familiar with are chess, checkers, and go. Of those, it seems that the branching factor of the game largely determines how well computers play them. It seems that checkers with the lowest branching factor gives humans the hardest time, then chess, and then go with a much larger branching factor is not even in the same ballpark with the top humans. Does this relationship between branching factor and computer strength hold for other games? Or do some games break the pattern? If some games do break the pattern, why? Simplicity of the game? Magical shortcuts? Russell
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