That would be exciting seeing your team get involved with this Monte Carlo stuff, especially since you have some previous experience with this.
- Don David Doshay wrote: > I have been interested in monte-carlo approaches to Go since running > my first MC simulations in magnetic phase transitions when I was in > graduate school in the 1980's. What held me back, even when the latest > crop of MC programs started winning against older stronger programs > and my program SlugGo, is that in the physics simulations we know on > theoretical grounds what the shape of the random distributions are, but > in Go we do not. I was amazed at how well UCT helps get around the > problem and still allows the use of nearly flat random distributions > (flat except for a few hand tuned rules). > > Recent work on the ELO ratings of patterns comes very close to what I > think is needed to move forward, and we are also working on ways to > determine biased probability distributions that are appropriate for Go > move selection. > > I have little doubt that such "weighted playout" (not really heavy or > light) > considerations will lead to the next major step in computer Go progress. > The advantage of such a method is that it intrinsically matches the basic > premise of MC: the right degree of randomness allows you to search the > problem space appropriately. > > Cheers, > David > > > > On 8, Jan 2008, at 11:04 AM, Don Dailey wrote: > >> I think Dave Hillis coined this term "heavy playouts." >> >> In the first programs the play-outs were uniformly random. Any move >> would get played with equal likelihood with the exception of eye-filling >> moves which don't get played at all of course. >> >> But it was found that the program improves if the play-outs are somewhat >> "managed". So Dave starting calling the original formula "light >> play-outs" and the slower but better method "heavy play-outs." >> >> And yes, it slows down the play-outs. Still, the play-outs seem to >> require a good bit of randomness - certainly they cannot be >> deterministic and it seems difficult to find the general principles that >> are important to the play-out policy. >> >> - Don > > _______________________________________________ > 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/
