Hi Dan, Your suggestions hits at what I consider a basic truth or an axiom for game playing entities, humans or computers - that strength is a function of time and memory. Skill can be viewed as time. The skillful player is just making his time count more by being more efficient, sometimes many orders of magnitude more efficient.
It works like running. The fast runner gets to a destination in a certain amount of time - but someone on crutches can still get there if you give him more time. We view the faster runner as more skilled as a runner even though they both can cover the same ground. Of course in computing - and in humans - memory can be traded off for speed. Intensive knowledge based programs is one way to make that trade-off. Every child learns this when he memorizes the multiplication table - it makes it possible to multiply much larger numbers faster. And sometimes people confuse knowledge with IQ, and in a sense I think they are right. - Don On Thu, 2007-01-18 at 21:18 +0000, dan wrote: > Hi, > > The challenge to write a go playing program that could beat a professional > was > issued before the wide availability of Internet Go Servers, and broadband > access. > > Under these new conditions, it is trivial to write such a program, provided > the game takes place on a server, and at time limits chosen by the program. > For example a random point playing program could choose time limits of half > a second per move, sudden death. > > Therefore I suggest that a program's strength can (if needed) be expressed as > the shortest time limits that a player of a standard strength (eg Pro. 1 dan) > would be willing to play the program at, given an equal reward/loss regime > (ie the chance of either winning would be 0.5). > > The format of time limits for such games would need to be standardised, for > example - it could be decided that only limits of the type 'sudden death, x > number of seconds per move' were allowed. > > In that case, 'x' could be used as a measure of the program's strength (as an > abreviation for 'would beat a standard strength player half the time at x > seconds per move') > > Of course the strength of a 'standard strength' Go player varies, and > professional one dans would likely be unwilling to be beaten in ultra blitz > games for the benefit of computer go programmers, so 'amateur 1 dan' is a > realistic idea for a standard strength go player. > > dan > > > > _______________________________________________ > 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/
