On Sun, 2007-01-21 at 21:23 +0100, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > Of course time helps. I guess the difference between 8 hours time and > 1 hour time gives an advantage of about 13 points (1 amateur grade) > at > the top professional level, which will probably swing the winning > percentage from 50% to 90% at that level. Is this about 200 ELO?
I think this may be closer to 400 ELO. > I > would also benefit from more time. However, i don't think that 8 > folding the time limit once more will bring the same 200 ELO increase > in winning probability. I don't think we can use our intuition to accurately judge this. Most people are presenting me with their intuitions on the subject - but I'm presenting you with something more substantive, actually results in game playing programs. Take a nice scalable program than is equal to a human at fast time controls - add a lot of time to both human and computer - and see both play much stronger - in fact the human seems to have the edge in this regard. I'm talking about well documented computer chess facts. I don't have any reason to believe this only applies to chess but not other games. > The human mind does not scale like this, i > think. This is only your intuition. Of course I also have my intuition on this (which is based on related factual information however) which says (in principal) it will scale nearly the same. > Also you have to train to use this much time effectively, to > stretch you attention span as much as possible. This I agree with wholeheartedly. 8 hours vs 1 hour is one thing, but 64 hours vs 1 hour, if nothing else, requires 2 or 3 sleep breaks which cut's into your thinking time. On top of that the whole ordeal would be exhausting and it's probably impossible to stay as focused as the 1 hour players. But I'm talking about the general principal of this, not considering biological factors which would cut into this a bit. > In Europe time limits in tournaments are usually set to about 1.5 > hours. Increasing it to 4 hours will surely improve my winning > probability, because i can avoid a lot of (mostly tactical) mistakes. > My guess is i may gain about 20 points (i guess that corresponds to > 150 ELO at my level). But giving me 8 hours will not improve it very > much more. I don't think any time limit will increase my level by > more > than 200 ELO (30 points?), because: > 1- I would not have the stamina to use this extra time effectively. > 2- Mark Boon pointed out the problem of conceptual barriers. I just > lack some of the concepts that 7d players master and I can't master > these concepts on my own by thinking very hard during the course of a > game. I don't really believe in conceptual barriers - I think we romanticize this too much. There are lot's of these in Chess, for instance knowing that you might get a draw with bishops of opposite color despite being 2 or even 3 pawns down in some cases. Certain pieces of knowledge are "not likely" to be figured out over the board. The key phrase here is "not likely." First of all, you can't assume that because there is some knowledge that you "might not" figure out, it's impossible to play a stronger game. For the same reason, chess computers play stronger than humans while having far less understanding of the game. They did this by doing SOME THINGS much better, even though they did MANY THINGS much worse. But the phrase "not likely" doesn't mean impossible. The biggest "barrier" isn't so much conceptual, it's the fact that if you are more than a few stones weaker, no practical amount of time will make up that gap even with my strength/time curve. Nevertheless, people keep posting these ridiculous examples of strength disparity and calling it a "conceptual barrier." It's just a plain old fashion "strength barrier!" However, I would point out that if you pick some ridiculous example, where some weak player wants to beat a pro with a time odds game, and you have to give the weak player the required 10 years per move to equalize, he may still have a chance! In 10 years of concentrated effort you are bound to improve your game enormously and certainly be able to hurdle many "conceptual barriers." Remember, for this formula to work I require the same focus as in short games. A lot of top pro's have probably put 10 years worth of study into their game assuming they study for 30 or 40 years 8 hours a day in a highly focused and productive way. So once you go beyond 3 or 4 stones, you are into this area where you require days of study per move. This is enough time to learn new concepts unless you are completely dense. If I had 30 days, for example, to make a move I would certainly not give up after 1 minute and say, "sorry, I don't known that concept", I would take the time to learn it. - Don > Dave _______________________________________________ computer-go mailing list computer-go@computer-go.org http://www.computer-go.org/mailman/listinfo/computer-go/
