On Tue, 2006-12-05 at 15:10 +0100, Chrilly wrote: > Sylvain Gelly wrote: > You are totally right. For Yizao (one of the author of MoGo), who is a > good Go player, this gives a bad "style" to MoGo. As I don't know how to > play Go (beyond the rules :)), I don't see any style and I don't care :). > > I forwarded this to other people in the computer-chess community. The common > answer was: Sylvain has the right qualification to be the new shooting star > in Computer-Go. > > Feng Hsu wrote in the beginning of the Deep Blue project a paper "Building a > GM-level chess programm without knowing nothing about chess". > This was probably a paraphrase of Hans Berliner, the former correspondence > chess world-champion who build HiTech. I assume everytime Feng Hsu made a > proposal Berliner did not like, he told him that he knows nothing about > chess. Feng Hsu had even at the end of the Deep Blue project problems to > make moves correctly on the board. It was not obvious for him were the > square c5 is. > > There is another Chrilly's law: Everybody besides a GM can write a strong > chess programm. Maybe this holds also for Go-Programms. Everyboyd beside a > Dan can write a strong programm. Or maybe its the other way round. The > programms are relative weak, because the programmers are all too strong.
That's quite a generalization, but I understand the principle of it. In my opinion this has more to do with the open-mindedness and imagination of the programmer and the programmers skill rather than playing skill. Chess or Go skill does help, I have no doubt about that, but it is not the major factor in how strong you can make a program. And yes, I believe the skill can hold you back if you are of a certain mindset. A lot of very strong players are extremely opinionated and prejudiced, while others, more flexible thinkers willing to admit they still have much to learn. These are the kind that make be able to write a strong program. It seems like I remember an experiment once where a certain kind of tactic is more easily seen by a weak player than a strong due to the strong players biases. With knowledge and skill comes a bit of prejudice. I don't think all strong players are strong for the same reasons. Some are very intuitive but they cannot explain (and they in fact don't fully understand) why the know a move is good, they just know. Others can be very articulate about exactly why a move is good or bad and can explain it. I knew a 2400 chess player who had a rule in his head for everything. You could almost transfer his knowledge directly to a chess program in the form of simple rules. He did not rely on intuition, but as he learned to play better and better he made up rules of thumb and continually improved and refined them. They were not all general either - some were very specific to the point that it was hard to believe anyone could actually make a rule to play that move. He would have been a great advisor for a chess program. Larry Kaufman of course had similar skills and he was my partner for many years. He could produce rules and helped me come up with practical definitions of what exactly is a backward pawn, etc. We didn't always have to use concepts from books, we went beyond that with useful little definitions of things you normally don't see in books. - Don > Chrilly > > _______________________________________________ > computer-go mailing list > computer-go@computer-go.org > http://www.computer-go.org/mailman/listinfo/computer-go/ _______________________________________________ computer-go mailing list computer-go@computer-go.org http://www.computer-go.org/mailman/listinfo/computer-go/
