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Subject: Re: Go programming

Author: Roy Eassa

Date: 13:53:41 02/12/04

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On February 12, 2004 at 16:11:17, Charles Roberson wrote:

>On February 12, 2004 at 15:12:18, Roy Eassa wrote:
>
>
>>
>>Anyway, has anybody here ever tried writing a Go-playing program?  I think it's
>>a field ripe for a "breakthrough" -- a completely new approach from those that
>>have been tried.  I also think the Go programming world will make a small number
>
> I was at this point in 92. Learned to play go then finished my AI research.
> In 95 I wrote a go program that played legal go and was better than "godummy".
> The data structures effort is more elaborate than chess but the legal move
>generation is easier.
>
>>>
>>I think some smart person will create a full-featured GUI for Go that uses a
>>"plug-in" architecture for playing engines, then negotiate with all the top
>>authors to adapt their programs to that architecture, thus making a lot of money
>>without having to write a strong engine themselves.  Further, I think that
>>having a standard plug-in architecture for testing one's Go engine will prompt
>>many more people to create Go engines, thus increasing competition exponentially
>>-- increasing the chance for a breakthrough.
>
>         CGoban was a nice gui years ago and it uses the standard protocol
>required for all go engines. Thus the protocol part for a plug-in engine is
>done. This protocol is a standard and required by the international go
>association. When computer-computer go is played with this standard the
>computers are directly connected with no human intervention.


I knew there was some sort of standard, used by GnuGo, but I did not think that
most of the strongest commercial programs (Go++, The Many Faces of Go, HandTalk,
Wulu, etc.) used it.  Also, there seems to be an extreme dearth of
program-versus-program games being played in Go, as compared to zillions here in
the computer chess world.


>
>>Bottom line: I think there's a huge gap in the market that SOMEBODY will get
>>rich from at some point in the not-too-distant future.  And Go is a pretty
>>interesting game, even though "chess" is considered a dirty word to many serious
>>Go players.
>
>   Agreed - there is a huge gap, but there is a reason for it. It is a tough
>problem. In chess we see efforts in knowledge and graph theory. In go, the best
>programs are heavy on knowledge. So, you need to team with a go master.
>A good position evaluator is key and seems to require more pattern recognition
>than is needed in chess.


Yup.  That's very true.  But creating a program will the Go equialents of all
the features of ChessBase/Fritz then inviting the world to create engines for it
seems to be quite doable ...

>
>   Charles




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