I have build just for fun a simple BackGammon engine. [...]
Interesting - did you also try it for chess, or do you think there's no
point in this?
The Hydra team has thought about this. Especially the Hydra chess expert GM
Lutz. Some endgames are difficult to understand, but the moves are more or
less forced. One could play down the line and evaluate once a clear position
has been reached. One problem is the definition of "clear positon". The even
more difficult problem is how to incorporate this in a normal Alpha-Beta
framework. How to mix the result of the normal eval with the "rollout".
The results in Go are spectacular, because the quality of conventional
evaluations is low. In chess its at least not that bad. But one could argue,
that in BackGammon the quality of the eval is even higher. The simple
Rollout programm is not as strong as the best ones. But it is in relation to
its eval very strong. It has also a remarkable
programming-effort/playing-strength ratio.
These things are also done in FPGA and the FPGA code is already much too
complicated. FPGA-programming is easier than ASIC-design, but its still much
more cumbersome than conventional software development. Just trying out
things is not possible. We felt also, that even if it works, the improvement
measured in Elos would not be very spectacular. The Elo/Effort ratio is low.
I was simply too lazy (or too professional) to give it a try.
Chrilly
_______________________________________________
computer-go mailing list
computer-go@computer-go.org
http://www.computer-go.org/mailman/listinfo/computer-go/
