Don Dailey wrote: >Your odds of finding a "winning move against a pro >player" is different from finding one of the "best >move(s)" in the position, ...
I agree. I was oversimplifying. It would be more appropriate to say: Except, probably for the first moves (as you point correctly, where the number of playable moves is higher), the average ratio between pro-level-playable-moves and legal-moves is *maybe* 1/100. There is sometimes only one (pro level) playable move and sometimes two or three in, perhaps, 200 legal moves (decreasing while the board fills). My numbers should only be taken as an orientation of how small the probability is. Of course, this does not pretend to be an argument against MC. It is an answer to a post who related this with infinite shift of Elo ratings against players who "always loose". As I understood, Aloril, used this to state that a random player does not necessarily loose always, even against a pro. I have been reading with much interest all that has been posted on MC in the last months and it sure is a promising way. I still have the doubt if it could have some kind of ceiling in cases where the more you approach the correct move the more you loose, as in ladders. (see my post "MC/UCT question" 6, December) On the Chinese/Japanese question: >This cuts both ways. Wouldn't it be pretty silly if >I was watching a Japanese game and continuously >criticized certain moves as "wrong" based on Chinese >standards? I don't agree on that. If you are used to Chinese and watch a Japanese game, you won't see any kind of silly moves (assuming they are not silly to a Japanese observer). The idea is: when there is territory to be won, win it. That's the best you can do by any ruleset. For strong players, the ruleset does not make much difference (some minor differences exist even between different Japanese rulesets.) When there is no more territory to be won, the game is finished, but that not easy to understand for weak players. That's why the Chinese ruleset indulgently ignores unnecessary moves. Moves made when the game is finished don't win anything and don't mean anything (neither by Chinese rules). They are objective wrong moves. Imagine a chess game where you give mate, then you capture the king and, after that, you still move your pawns. If a human does that, its offensive for the opponent. If a computer does that, its just wrong. Jacques. _______________________________________________ computer-go mailing list computer-go@computer-go.org http://www.computer-go.org/mailman/listinfo/computer-go/
