Perhaps I am oversimplifying, but if I understand correctly, MoGo
primarily gets its strength in 9x9 go by improving upon the random
simulations by preferring "good" moves over purely random moves during
the random game. Yet I have two results that seem to indicate that it's
not really that simple
The first is that we have a purely random UCT version running on CGOS
(GoJin) and its rating seems to sit around 1640. But in the paper we are
told that the very first Mogo achieved almost the identical rating, yet
it already had some improvements, such as preferring large captures. Can
I conclude that those improvements to the random simulations actually
have no effect on the performance of the program?
But even more confusing to me is that we've tried some simple
improvements to the random program that have had no effect. The ones
that I was certain would improve performance were versions that changed
random simulations so that moves near existing stones would be preferred
over stones placed too far away from the action. Many versions have been
tried, e.g., moves that must be adjacent to some other stone, moves that
must be no more than 1 space away from existing stones, etc. Surely on
average these are going to be better moves than purely random moves --
or is this, indeed, the flaw in my logic? Shouldn't these versions
outperform the purely random versions? In almost every case the modified
version performed identical to the purely random version -- no worse and
no better -- at least according to the self tests. Does this really
sound right?
-Richard
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