I think he is missing the tree search part. Just doing a one-ply lookahead and then doing playouts will not make a strong bot. I would like to defer an explanation of UCT (or something else) to someone who is more of an expert.
- George On Mon, Jul 6, 2009 at 8:25 PM, Raymond Wold<computergol...@w-wins.com> wrote: > Fred Hapgood wrote: >> >> I have a really basic question about how MC works in the context of Go. >> >> Suppose the problem is to make the first move in a game, and suppose we >> have accepted as a constraint that we will abstain from just copying >> some joseki out of a book -- we are going to use MC to figure out the >> first move de novo. We turn on the software and it begins to play out >> games. My question is: how does the software pick its first move? Does >> it move entirely at random? Sometimes it sounds that way MC works is by >> picking each move at random, from the first to the last, for a million >> games or so. The trouble is that the number of possible Go games is so >> large that a million games would not even begin to explore the >> possibilities. It is hard to imagine anything useful emerging from >> examining such a small number. So I'm guessing that the moves are not >> chosen at random. But even if you reduce the possibilities to two >> options per move, which would be pretty impressive, you'd still run out >> of your million games in only twenty moves, after which you would be >> back to picking at random again. > > We don't know why it works. It's just a matter of empirical fact that the > win rate in random play-outs is a decent indicator of the strength of a > move. The math involved is likely to be hideous and probably of little > practical interest, and I don't know of anyone that has tried. > >> What am I missing?? > > I don't think you're missing anything at all. > _______________________________________________ > 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/
